Technology

See also: Technical analysis on Cisco · Cisco company tracker

Last Updated: 27 August 2026

Cisco Systems finished fiscal 2026 on 25 July 2026 with revenue of $63.3bn, up 12%, and reported it on 12 August 2026. The company has spent five years telling investors it was becoming a subscription software business; fiscal 2026 was the year the story changed. Hyperscaler orders for AI infrastructure reached $9.3bn, networking revenue grew 22%, and the recurring-revenue metrics Cisco used to lead with have quietly disappeared from the press release. This report sets out what the filings and releases say, with no ratings and no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CSCO — Nasdaq. Constituent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100
Sector	Technology — communication equipment and networking
Headquarters	170 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, California
Founded / incorporated	Incorporated in California in 1984; reincorporated in Delaware in 2021
CEO / Leadership	Chuck Robbins, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, quoted as such in the results release of 12 August 2026. Mark Patterson has been Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since 27 July 2025, succeeding Scott Herren, whose advisory transition ended on 1 May 2026. Jeetu Patel is President and Chief Product Officer
Employees	Approximately 86,200 as at 26 July 2025, the latest disclosed figure. The FY2026 Form 10-K had not been filed as at 27 August 2026, and the count predates the restructuring announced 13 May 2026 that cuts roughly 4,000 roles
Revenue (latest reported fiscal year)	$63,325m for FY2026 (year ended 25 July 2026), up 11.8%
Net income (FY2026, GAAP)	$13,267m; GAAP diluted EPS $3.33. Non-GAAP diluted EPS $4.33
Annualised recurring revenue	$32.1bn as at 25 July 2026, up 3%. Disclosed on the earnings call only — the metric no longer appears in the press release
Remaining performance obligations	$46,734m, up 7% (product $23,436m, services $23,298m)
Market cap	Approximately $442.9bn, based on the 26 August 2026 closing price of $112.36 and 3,941.4m shares outstanding
Dividend	$0.42 per share per quarter, $1.68 annualised, a yield of about 1.50%. Raised from $0.41 on 11 February 2026 — the fifteenth consecutive annual increase
Fiscal year end	Last Saturday of July. FY2026 ended 25 July 2026; FY2027 ends around 25 July 2027

Related ChartsView tools: Live Charts for price action, and the Economic Calendar for the macro backdrop.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• The AI order book went from rounding error to $9.3bn in a year: FY2026 hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders totalled $9.3bn, of which $4.0bn landed in Q4 alone, roughly 4.5 times the FY2025 level. AI infrastructure revenue was about $4bn in FY2026 and the company has targeted $7.5bn for FY2027.
• FY2027 guidance implies a step change, not a plateau: revenue of $72.2bn to $73.4bn against a FY2026 base of $63.3bn is growth of 14% to 16%, the fastest Cisco has guided in its modern history. Non-GAAP EPS of $5.05 to $5.11 is growth of 17% to 18%, and management indicated roughly 10% growth in the core business excluding AI infrastructure.
• Operating leverage is offsetting margin mix: Q4 FY2026 non-GAAP gross margin fell 210 basis points year on year to 66.3%, yet non-GAAP operating margin rose 160 basis points to 35.9%, because non-GAAP operating expenses dropped from 34.1% to 30.4% of revenue. Full-year non-GAAP operating income was $22.0bn, up 13%.
• Demand is broad, not a single-customer story: Q4 total product orders rose 35% year on year and were still up 25% excluding hyperscalers, with double-digit growth in every geography and customer market. Enterprise product orders rose 21%, public sector 30% and service provider and cloud 95%. Networking product orders grew 40%, an eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
• Cash return is uninterrupted and long-term debt has fallen: $12.7bn was returned to shareholders in FY2026, long-term debt was cut from $22,861m to $19,372m, and the dividend rose for a fifteenth consecutive year with $8.1bn of buyback authorisation still available.

Bear Case

• Gross margin is being traded away for AI volume, by design: Q4 product non-GAAP gross margin fell 270 basis points year on year to 64.8%. The Chief Financial Officer told the call to expect a slight gross margin headwind through FY2027, and Q1 FY2027 non-GAAP gross margin is guided to 65% to 66%, below the 66.9% FY2026 average.
• The recurring-revenue story has stalled and left the press release: ARR of $32.1bn grew only 3% and product ARR 5%, against total revenue growth of 12%. Subscription revenue fell to 48% of the total in Q4 FY2026 from 51% in FY2024, and deferred revenue grew 3%. Neither ARR nor subscription revenue appears anywhere in the FY2026 quarterly releases; both are now spoken remarks on the call.
• Security, the strategic bet, grew 2%: FY2026 security revenue of $8,232m was up just 2% on $8,063m, with Q2 down 4% and Q3 flat. Collaboration grew 4% and Observability 4%. Outside Networking, essentially nothing is growing.
• Working capital absorbed the growth and cash flow did not move: FY2026 operating cash flow of $14,177m was flat against $14,193m in FY2025 despite net income rising 30%. Inventories jumped 80% from $3,164m to $5,694m, financing receivables rose from $6,527m to $8,332m, and short-term debt nearly doubled from $5,232m to $10,161m.
• Goodwill exceeds equity: goodwill of $59,477m plus purchased intangibles of $7,557m totals $67.0bn against total equity of $50,285m, largely a legacy of the $28bn Splunk deal. Cisco no longer discloses Splunk's revenue, ARR or margin separately, so the return on that capital cannot be verified from outside.

3. Segments and Revenue Breakdown

Cisco did not realign its product categories in FY2026 — Networking, Security, Collaboration and Observability, plus Services, are unchanged across all four quarters and against FY2025, as are the Americas, EMEA and APJC geographic segments. The material disclosure change is the removal of ARR and subscription metrics from the earnings release.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Networking	54.7% ($34,668m in FY2026, up 22%)	Switching, routing, wireless and the data-centre portfolio, including the AI infrastructure sold to hyperscalers and the campus refresh cycle. Q4 alone was $9,791m, up 28%. This single category delivered essentially all of Cisco's FY2026 growth.
Services	23.7% ($15,030m in FY2026, flat)	Technical support and advanced services attached to the installed hardware base. Carries a 68.8% GAAP gross margin against 63.2% for product, and behaves as an annuity — but it did not grow at all in FY2026, in the year or in Q4.
Security	13.0% ($8,232m in FY2026, up 2%)	Network security, Splunk, Duo, Hypershield and AI Defense. Q4 rose 14% on strength in Splunk and network security, but the full year grew 2% with Q2 down 4%.
Collaboration	6.8% ($4,300m in FY2026, up 4%)	Webex, calling, meetings and devices. Q4 grew 12%.
Observability	1.7% ($1,095m in FY2026, up 4%)	ThousandEyes, AppDynamics and the newly acquired Galileo. The smallest category, and the one Cisco is expanding by acquisition.

By geography in FY2026: Americas $37,799m (59.7%, up 12%, gross margin 65.1%); EMEA $16,613m (26.2%, up 12%, gross margin 71.2%); APJC $8,914m (14.1%, up 9%, gross margin 66.6%). Total product revenue was $48,295m (76.3%, up 16%) against services of $15,030m (23.7%, flat).

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Two lines. Product revenue of $48,295m in FY2026 is hardware and the software licensed onto it; services revenue of $15,030m is technical support and advanced services attached to the installed base. Services carry the better margin — 68.8% GAAP against 63.2% for product — and behave as an annuity, but they grew 0% in FY2026, so the growth is entirely in the lower-margin line. That mix shift is the single most important thing happening to Cisco's income statement.

The subscription shift has partially reversed. Subscription revenue peaked at 51% of the total in FY2024, when Splunk was newly consolidated, and was 48% in Q4 FY2026. ARR of $32.1bn is growing 3%. Remaining performance obligations of $46,734m (up 7%) and deferred revenue of $29,781m (up 3%) are the contracted backlog, and both are growing well below total revenue — because hardware, which is recognised on shipment, is growing far faster than anything sold as a subscription.

Switching costs come from operations, not features. The 10-K describes customers treating Cisco as a strategic partner for network design, deployment and support because of the scale and complexity of their networks. In practice the lock-in is the CCNA, CCNP and CCIE certification ecosystem, IOS and NX-OS operational tooling embedded in customers' change-management processes, and a sales and technical organisation of roughly 25,600 people.

Silicon One is the moat Cisco is actually betting on. The strategy is to control the switching silicon, the systems and the operating software together. The G300 for scale-out was announced in February 2026 and the P200 for what Cisco calls scale-across followed at Cisco Live in June. Notably, Cisco runs a dual track: it also ships NVIDIA Spectrum silicon under a Cisco operating system in the 102.4Tbps N9100, offering customers either architecture rather than forcing a choice.

Vertical supply-chain control is now explicit. The Chief Financial Officer told the Q4 call there is no intermediary between Cisco and TSMC across wafers, substrates, assembly and test. Cisco also took a direct equity position of roughly 2% to 3% in DRAM maker Nanya Technology, in a private placement that closed on 8 April 2026, to secure memory supply into a shortage the vendor says runs to at least the end of 2027.

5. Financial Health

All figures below come from Cisco's quarterly earnings releases furnished on Form 8-K and its Form 10-K filings. Balance-sheet and cash-flow items for FY2022 to FY2025 have been re-derived from SEC XBRL company facts; FY2026 figures come from the results release of 12 August 2026, as the FY2026 Form 10-K had not been filed as at 27 August 2026.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 30 Jul 2022)	51,557	+3.0%	$2.82	$3.36	$1.50	$8,416m
FY2023 (to 29 Jul 2023)	56,998	+10.6%	$3.07	$3.89	$1.54	$6,658m
FY2024 (to 27 Jul 2024)	53,803	−5.6%	$2.54	$3.73	$1.58	$19,621m
FY2025 (to 26 Jul 2025)	56,654	+5.3%	$2.55	$3.81	$1.62	$22,861m
FY2026 (to 25 Jul 2026)	63,325	+11.8%	$3.33	$4.33	$1.66	$19,372m

† The long-term debt column is the non-current portion only. Short-term debt sat alongside it at $5,232m in FY2025 and $10,161m in FY2026, so total debt was $28,093m and $29,533m respectively — the FY2026 fall in long-term debt is maturities rolling into the current bucket rather than net repayment. FY2026 cash-flow data shows $13,048m of debt issued and $12,251m repaid, with no new benchmark bond deal identified in calendar 2026. The step up in FY2024 reflects the borrowing that funded the Splunk acquisition, which closed 18 March 2024. Dividends are the amounts declared per share; the FY2026 total of $1.66 comprises $0.41, $0.41, $0.42 and $0.42.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q4 FY2026 (to 25 Jul 2026)	17,252	$1.22	$0.97
Q3 FY2026 (to 25 Apr 2026)	15,841	$1.06	$0.85
Q2 FY2026 (to 24 Jan 2026)	15,349	$1.04	$0.80
Q1 FY2026 (to 25 Oct 2025)	14,883	$1.00	$0.72
Q4 FY2025 (to 26 Jul 2025)	14,673	$0.99	$0.64
FY2026 total (to 25 Jul 2026)	63,325	$4.33	$3.33

The quarterly revenue figures reconcile: first-half revenue of $30,232m plus Q3 $15,841m plus Q4 $17,252m equals the $63,325m full-year total. FY2026 GAAP results carry $693m of restructuring charges, of which $511m fell in Q4, relating to the plan announced on 13 May 2026.

Cash flow and balance sheet. FY2026 operating cash flow was $14,177m, essentially flat on $14,193m in FY2025, against capital expenditure of $1,410m (up 56% from $905m), giving free cash flow of $12,767m. Depreciation, amortisation and other was $2,540m, of which $1,834m was amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles. Cash and equivalents of $7,218m plus short-term investments of $8,700m totalled $15,918m at year end, against total debt of $29,533m — net debt of $13,615m. Share-based compensation was $3,830m. Dividends paid were $6,553m and buybacks $6,106m, with a further $1,873m of tax-withholding repurchases.

Guidance issued 12 August 2026. For FY2027 the company guides to revenue of $72.2bn to $73.4bn, non-GAAP EPS of $5.05 to $5.11 and GAAP EPS of $4.00 to $4.06. For Q1 FY2027 it guides to revenue of $18.0bn to $18.2bn, non-GAAP gross margin of 65% to 66%, non-GAAP operating margin of 35.5% to 36.5%, non-GAAP EPS of $1.32 to $1.34 and GAAP EPS of $1.08 to $1.10. The release explicitly names the actual impact of tariffs as a risk to that guidance.

6. Valuation

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	~$442.9bn (26 August 2026 close of $112.36 × 3,941.4m shares outstanding)
Enterprise value	~$456.5bn (market cap $442.9bn + total debt $29.5bn − cash and short-term investments $15.9bn, per the balance sheet at 25 July 2026. Total debt is short-term $10,161m plus long-term $19,372m)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~33.7x (share price $112.36 / FY2026 GAAP diluted EPS $3.33). On FY2026 non-GAAP diluted EPS of $4.33 the multiple is about 25.9x; the $1.00 gap is share-based compensation, acquisition-related amortisation and restructuring
P/E (forward)	~22.1x (share price $112.36 / the $5.08 midpoint of company FY2027 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $5.05 to $5.11). On the GAAP guidance midpoint of $4.03 the multiple is about 27.9x
P/S (TTM)	~7.0x (market cap $442.9bn / FY2026 revenue $63,325m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~25.5x (enterprise value $456.5bn / EBITDA $17,908m; EBITDA = FY2026 GAAP operating income $15,368m + depreciation, amortisation and other of $2,540m from the cash flow statement, which is the wider figure and includes the $1,834m of acquisition-related intangible amortisation)
P/FCF	~34.7x (market cap $442.9bn / free cash flow $12,767m; free cash flow = FY2026 operating cash flow $14,177m − capital expenditure $1,410m). Cisco returned $12.7bn in FY2026, roughly 99% of that free cash flow
Price/book	~8.8x (market cap $442.9bn / total equity $50,285m). Price to tangible book is not meaningful: goodwill and purchased intangibles of $67.0bn exceed total equity
52-week high	$130.37
52-week low	$66.13
Short interest (% of float)	1.50% (58,942,738 shares short against a float of 3,942,642,110), settlement date 14 August 2026 — down from 64,824,369 the prior month
Days to cover	2.58 days, same 14 August 2026 settlement date
Dividend yield	~1.50% ($1.68 annualised / $112.36). FY2026 payout was 38% of non-GAAP EPS

7. What Are They Building

Silicon, on two tracks at once. Silicon One G300 for scale-out was announced at Cisco Live EMEA in February 2026, and P200 for scale-across followed at Cisco Live US in June. Alongside its own silicon, Cisco ships the N9100 — a 102.4Tbps switch running NVIDIA Spectrum silicon under a Cisco operating system — and was named a premier partner for partner-developed Spectrum-X systems at NVIDIA GTC in March 2026. The bet is that controlling silicon, systems and software together produces better performance and better supply-chain economics; the hedge is that customers who want the NVIDIA architecture can still buy Cisco.

AI data-centre reference architectures. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA was expanded at GTC in March 2026 and extended in August 2026 to the rack-scale era with support for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 and HGX Rubin NVL8. Supermicro compute is to be offered inside the Secure AI Factory from October 2026.

Security and agentic AI. Cisco Live US in June 2026 moved Hypershield from early-access preview toward broader production availability, added adaptive testing and guardrails to AI Defense along with agentic supply-chain security and any-agent-platform support, and launched Cisco Cloud Control, which the company says roughly 4,500 enterprises have signed up to since. Two 2026 acquisitions feed this: Galileo Technologies, for AI trust, evaluation and failure detection, announced 9 April 2026 and completed 22 May 2026; and Astrix Security, for non-human identity covering API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens and AI agent identity, announced 4 May 2026 and closed in Q4 FY2026. Combined FY2026 acquisition spend net of divestitures was $516m.

Quantum networking, at research stage. Cisco announced a Universal Quantum Switch on 23 April 2026, with a proof of concept that preserved quantum information with degradation of 4% or less in encoding and entanglement fidelity. There is no revenue attached to this.

AI applied internally as operating leverage. Management said 145,000 support cases were resolved entirely by AI with no human intervention in FY2026, and that Cisco IQ is used by more than 8,600 customers. Wi-Fi 7 is now more than half of wireless orders.

8. Peers and Competitive Position

Market capitalisations below were re-checked on 27 August 2026 against the previous session's closing prices.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025/2026 metric
Broadcom (AVGO)	~$1,691.7bn	Q2 FY2026 revenue $22.2bn, up 48%, with AI semiconductor revenue of $10.8bn, up 143%. The merchant-silicon alternative sitting directly upstream of Cisco's switches
Palo Alto Networks (PANW)	~$276.5bn	Q3 FY2026 revenue $3.0bn, with Q4 guided to $3.345bn to $3.355bn, up 32%. Completed the $25bn CyberArk acquisition on 11 February 2026
Arista Networks (ANET)	~$255.1bn	First $3.0bn quarter in Q2 2026, up 37.7% year on year, with FY2026 guidance raised to roughly $12.6bn, up about 40% — the growth expression of the AI-networking trade against Cisco's guided 15%
Fortinet (FTNT)	~$115.6bn	Q2 2026 revenue $2.05bn, up 26%, with FY2026 guidance raised to $8.02bn to $8.18bn, up about 19%. Growing security revenue roughly ten times faster than Cisco
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)	~$73.1bn	Q2 FY2026 revenue $10.7bn, up 40%, with Networking revenue of $2.7bn up 148% and FY2026 Networking growth guided to 72% to 75% — largely the Juniper acquisition, which closed 2 July 2025, rather than organic growth. Juniper (JNPR) no longer trades
Nokia (NOK)	~$58.3bn	Q2 2026 net sales EUR 4,815m, up 8% as reported and 9% at constant currency, with AI and Cloud customer sales up 105%
Ericsson (ERIC)	~$32.9bn	Q2 2026 net sales SEK 52.7bn, down 6% year on year and down 1% organically, reported 14 July 2026

On forward non-GAAP earnings Cisco is the cheapest large-cap in this group at roughly 22 times. That discount is the market pricing the difference between 15% guided growth and Arista's 40%, and between security revenue growing 2% and Fortinet's 19% to 26%.

9. Insider Activity

Chair and Chief Executive Chuck Robbins sold 21,628 shares on 14 August 2026 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, two days after the FY2026 results, leaving 602,710 shares held. Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson sold on the same day under a plan adopted 19 December 2025. Selling is systematic, plan-driven and clustered on the same calendar dates across essentially the whole executive team, with no open-market purchases by any insider in the last twenty-four months. Note the escalating price through the year: February sales cleared around $76, May and June around $117 to $121, and August around $111.50.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Thimaya Subaiya (EVP, Operations)	19 Aug 2026	Sale	5,832	$111.47	$650,074	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Chuck Robbins (Chair & CEO)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	21,628	$111.54 weighted average	$2,412,346	Rule 10b5-1(c) plan
Mark Patterson (EVP & CFO)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	5,192	$111.51 weighted average	$578,979	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 19 Dec 2025
Jeetu Patel (President & CPO)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	7,170	$111.57	$799,928	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Deborah Stahlkopf (EVP, General Counsel)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	6,487	$111.53	$723,494	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Oliver Tuszik (EVP, Global Sales)	14 Aug 2026	Sale	2,760	$112.46	$310,390	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Mark Patterson (EVP & CFO)	11 Jun 2026	Sale	7,397	$119.96	$887,322	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Chuck Robbins (Chair & CEO)	22 May 2026	Sale	21,400	$120.03	$2,568,584	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Jeetu Patel (President & CPO)	15 May 2026	Sale	7,169	$117.28	$840,781	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Chuck Robbins (Chair & CEO)	13 Feb 2026	Sale	19,545	$76.00	$1,485,395	Presumed 10b5-1 plan
Maria Victoria Wong (SVP, Chief Accounting Officer)	24 Feb 2026	Sale	2,179	$77.74	$169,395	Presumed 10b5-1 plan

For context on scale, the largest recent block sat just before this window: on 14 November 2025, two days after Q1 FY2026 results, Robbins sold 602,432 shares at $77.97 for approximately $47.0m, reducing his holding by roughly 46%. Deborah Stahlkopf and Jeetu Patel sold comparable proportions on the same day.

10. Key Risks

• Gross-margin erosion is structural and already disclosed: Q4 FY2026 non-GAAP gross margin of 66.3% was 210 basis points below a year earlier, with product margin down 270 basis points to 64.8%. Management has guided to a further headwind through FY2027. If operating-expense leverage stops offsetting it, the earnings growth in the guidance does not arrive.
• Memory cost inflation: DRAM average selling prices at Cisco's own investee Nanya rose more than 70% quarter on quarter and more than 200% year on year in Q1 2026, with the shortage expected to run to at least the end of 2027. Cisco says memory is 15% to 20% of the bill of materials on non-server products and is raising hardware prices selectively — raising prices into a demand cycle is a risk if that cycle turns.
• Hyperscaler concentration and the merchant-silicon threat: the FY2027 target of $7.5bn of AI revenue rests on a handful of buyers, described as triple-digit growth from four of the top hyperscalers. Those same customers design their own silicon and buy white-box systems, and Broadcom booked $10.8bn of AI semiconductor revenue in a single quarter. Cisco's decision to ship NVIDIA silicon in the N9100 concedes it cannot win on Silicon One alone.
• Tariffs, named by the company: the FY2027 forward-looking statement specifically calls out the actual impact of tariffs on both Q1 and full-year guidance, alongside supply constraints and variability of component costs. The exposure is flagged but not quantified.
• Splunk integration and goodwill: goodwill of $59,477m plus purchased intangibles of $7,557m exceeds total equity of $50,285m. FY2026 amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles was $1,834m and acquisition and divestiture costs $375m. With Splunk no longer broken out and security revenue growing 2%, there is no external way to verify the return on a $28bn acquisition.
• The annuity underneath is barely growing: ARR up 3%, product ARR up 5%, deferred revenue up 3% and services revenue flat for the full year. When the AI and campus hardware cycle rolls over, what remains is growing in low single digits — the opposite of the durable software business Cisco described from 2020 to 2024.
• Cash conversion broke down in FY2026: operating cash flow was flat at $14,177m while GAAP net income rose 30%. Inventories rose $2,541m and financing receivables $1,835m, and capital expenditure rose 56%. Free cash flow of $12,767m covered $12.7bn of capital returns with essentially no margin of safety.
• Short-term debt nearly doubled: $10,161m now falls due inside twelve months against $15,918m of cash and investments, with FY2026 interest expense already $1,470m. No new long-dated benchmark issue was identified in calendar 2026, so maturities have rolled into the current bucket rather than being termed out.
• Enterprise refresh cycles end: the multi-year campus networking refresh Cisco has cited every quarter since Q2 FY2026 is by definition a replacement cycle. Wi-Fi 7 is already more than half of wireless orders, so the easy conversion is largely done.
• Restructuring during a demand surge: the plan announced 13 May 2026 removes roughly 4,000 roles at a cost of up to $1bn, with $693m charged in FY2026 and the balance expected in FY2027. Executing that while orders grow 35% is an operational risk in its own right.

11. Recent Developments

• 12 Aug 2026 — Q4 and full-year FY2026 results, and FY2027 guidance. FY2026 revenue of $63,325m rose 12%, with GAAP diluted EPS of $3.33 and non-GAAP EPS of $4.33. Q4 revenue was $17,252m, up 18%, with total product orders up 35% and up 25% excluding hyperscalers. FY2026 hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders reached $9.3bn. FY2027 guidance was set at revenue of $72.2bn to $73.4bn and non-GAAP EPS of $5.05 to $5.11. The shares rose 2.92% to $123.95 in the session and then fell 4.19% after hours.
• Aug 2026 — Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA extended to rack scale. Support added for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 and HGX Rubin NVL8, with Supermicro compute to be offered inside the Secure AI Factory from October 2026.
• 23 Jun 2026 — Supreme Court dismissed Cisco Systems v. Doe I. The Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act claims concerning alleged assistance to Chinese authorities in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners were disposed of, following oral argument on 28 April 2026.
• 8 – 12 Jun 2026 — Cisco Live US, San Diego. Launches spanned Catalyst, Nexus and Silicon One P200 for scale-across, Hypershield moving toward broader production availability, adaptive testing and guardrails for AI Defense, and the launch of Cisco Cloud Control.
• 13 May 2026 — Q3 FY2026 results and a raised AI order target. Revenue of $15,841m rose 12%, networking product orders accelerated above 50% year on year, and the FY2026 hyperscaler AI order target was raised from $5bn to $9bn. Full-year revenue guidance was lifted to $62.8bn to $63.0bn.
• 13 May 2026 — restructuring plan announced. Roughly 4,000 roles, under 5% of the workforce, at a cost of up to $1bn, redirecting investment to silicon, optics, security and internal AI. Substantially complete by the end of FY2027.
• 4 May 2026 — intent to acquire Astrix Security announced. Non-human identity security covering API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens and AI agent identity, reported at $250m to $350m. Closed in Q4 FY2026.
• 23 Apr 2026 — Universal Quantum Switch announced. Proof of concept preserved quantum information with degradation of 4% or less in encoding and entanglement fidelity.
• 9 Apr 2026 — intent to acquire Galileo Technologies announced. AI observability, trust, evaluation and failure detection. Completed 22 May 2026.
• 8 Apr 2026 — Nanya Technology private placement closed. Cisco invested alongside SanDisk, Kioxia and Solidigm in a placement of roughly NT$78.7bn, taking approximately 2% to 3% of the DRAM maker to secure memory supply.
• 16 Mar 2026 — Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA expanded at GTC. The 102.4Tbps Cisco N9100 was introduced, running NVIDIA Spectrum silicon under a Cisco operating system, and Cisco was named a premier partner for partner-developed Spectrum-X systems.
• 11 Feb 2026 — Q2 FY2026 results and a dividend increase. Revenue of $15,349m rose 10%, product orders rose 18% and hyperscaler AI infrastructure orders reached $2.1bn in the quarter. The quarterly dividend was raised from $0.41 to $0.42, a fifteenth consecutive annual increase.
• 9 – 13 Feb 2026 — Cisco Live EMEA, Amsterdam. Silicon One G300 for scale-out was announced with supporting systems and optics for AI data centres.

12. Key Dates

• 2 Oct 2026 — record date and ex-dividend date for the $0.42 quarterly dividend declared on 12 August 2026.
• 21 Oct 2026 — payment date for that $0.42 quarterly dividend.
• 26 Oct 2026 — Cisco Partner Summit 2026 opens in Vancouver, running to 28 October 2026.
• Expected Sep 2026 — FY2026 Form 10-K filing. The FY2025 10-K was filed on 3 September 2025. This will carry the first FY2026 employee count and the full segment and debt detail.
• Expected Oct 2026 — Supermicro compute becomes available inside the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA.
• Expected Oct 2026 — Q1 FY2027 quarter end, falling around 24 October 2026.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Q1 FY2027 results. Cisco had not issued its conference-call scheduling release as at 27 August 2026; that notice typically appears about two weeks ahead. Q1 FY2026 was reported on 12 November 2025.
• 8 Feb 2027 — Cisco Live EMEA opens, running to 12 February 2027. Dates are listed by Cisco; the venue is stated inconsistently across Cisco pages, so confirm before travelling.
• 6 Jun 2027 — Cisco Live US opens in Las Vegas, running to 10 June 2027, per Cisco's save-the-date page.
• Expected Jul 2027 — FY2027 fiscal year end, and the deadline by which the May 2026 restructuring plan is expected to be substantially complete.

No investor day or financial analyst conference has been scheduled or announced; on the Q4 call the Chief Executive referred to the last such event as having been a long time ago. Discussion of these dates continues on the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 14 August 2026

Autodesk sells the software that designs and builds the physical world — buildings, bridges, factories, cars and film. Fiscal 2026, which ended on 31 January 2026, was the strongest year in its recent record: revenue of $7,206m, up 18%, non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $10.43, up 23%, and billings of $7,771m, up 30%. Since then it has closed a $3.6bn acquisition of MaintainX, its largest deal ever, cut roughly 7% of its workforce, and faced a renewed board challenge from Starboard Value. Second-quarter fiscal 2027 results are due on 27 August 2026. This report sets out the segments, the five-year record from primary filings, and the raw valuation arithmetic, with no analyst price targets and no third-party ratings.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Autodesk, Inc.
Ticker / Exchange	ADSK / NASDAQ
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, USA
Founded	1982
Sector	Design and engineering software for architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing and media
CEO / Leadership	Andrew Anagnost, President and Chief Executive Officer since June 2017; Janesh Moorjani, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since December 2024
Employees	Approximately 14,300, following the January 2026 reduction of roughly 7% of the workforce
Revenue (FY2026, year ended 31 January 2026)	$7,206m, up 18% year on year
Net income (FY2026)	$1,124m GAAP
Diluted EPS (FY2026)	$5.23 GAAP; $10.43 non-GAAP
Market capitalisation	Approximately $54.5bn at $257.96 per share, 14 August 2026
Shares outstanding	Approximately 211.1 million
Remaining performance obligations	$7,810m at 30 April 2026, of which $5,383m current
Dividend	None. Autodesk has paid no dividend since April 2005 and returns cash through buybacks — $1,402m repurchased in fiscal 2026
Latest reported quarter	Q1 FY2027, ended 30 April 2026: revenue $1,934m, up 18%

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Growth accelerated rather than faded: Revenue grew 18% in fiscal 2026 to $7,206m, the fastest rate in the five-year record and up from 11.5% the prior year, with billings up 30% to $7,771m. Q1 fiscal 2027 continued at 18%. For a business of this size and maturity, re-acceleration is unusual.
• Margins and cash flow are at record levels: GAAP operating income reached $1,578m in fiscal 2026, a 21.9% margin, and management guides a non-GAAP operating margin of around 39% for fiscal 2027 with free cash flow of $2.725–2.800bn. Free cash flow over the twelve months to 30 April 2026 was approximately $2,729m against revenue of $7,507m — a 36% conversion rate.
• The revenue base is contracted and visible: Remaining performance obligations stood at $7,810m at 30 April 2026, with current RPO of $5,383m and deferred revenue of $4,457m. Subscription revenue was $6,743m of the $7,206m fiscal 2026 total. This is a business where most of next year's revenue is already signed.
• AECO scale in a construction cycle that favours it: The architecture, engineering and construction segment grew 22% to $3,583m and is now half of revenue, with management pointing to data centre and infrastructure construction as the source of strength. Autodesk's position in building information modelling is the deepest installed base in the category.
• MaintainX extends the platform beyond design: The $3.6bn all-cash acquisition, announced on 28 May 2026 and closed on 3 August 2026, takes Autodesk into asset and facility maintenance — the operating phase that follows design and construction. MaintainX was reported to be generating more than $135m of annual recurring revenue growing above 50%.

Bear Case

• Persistent activist pressure and a governance overhang: Starboard Value settled with Autodesk in 2025, placing two directors on the board, and has since mounted a second challenge in roughly twelve months, reportedly nominating further candidates including its own chief executive. A contested board is a distraction and signals that a significant holder does not accept the current margin trajectory.
• Two consecutive years of large layoffs point to execution strain: Autodesk cut roughly 9% of staff in February 2025 and a further 7%, around 1,000 roles, on 22 January 2026 at a pre-tax cost of $135–160m. Management itself flagged, in issuing fiscal 2027 guidance, a temporary risk to billings and revenue while it operationalises the sales optimisation plan.
• The transaction-model change makes the numbers hard to read: Autodesk's shift to a direct billing relationship with customers, with partners quoting rather than transacting, distorts billings, deferred revenue and free cash flow across periods. Fiscal 2026 billings growth of 30% against revenue growth of 18% is partly a transition artefact rather than underlying demand.
• Heavy exposure to construction and manufacturing cycles: With AECO at 49.7% of revenue and manufacturing a further 19.1%, Autodesk's end markets are cyclical capital-spending markets. The company's own disclosures repeatedly cite tariffs, trade wars, recessionary conditions and foreign exchange as factors that could affect results, with EMEA now 38.8% of revenue.
• The gap between GAAP and non-GAAP earnings is wide, and the multiple is not cheap: Fiscal 2026 GAAP diluted EPS of $5.23 was half the $10.43 non-GAAP figure, the difference driven largely by stock-based compensation and acquisition-related items. At roughly 38 times trailing GAAP earnings and about 26 times trailing enterprise value to EBITDA, the shares leave little room for the growth rate to normalise.

3. Business Segments

Autodesk reports revenue by product family. Figures below are for fiscal 2026, the year ended 31 January 2026, and reconcile to total revenue of $7,206m.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
AECO — $3,583m, up 22%	49.7%	Architecture, engineering, construction and operations. Revit, Civil 3D, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Autodesk Build and Forma. The largest and fastest-growing family, driven by building information modelling adoption and, per management, data centre and infrastructure construction.
AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT — $1,787m, up 14%	24.8%	The original computer-aided design product and its lighter-weight sibling, sold largely to individual professionals and small firms. A mature, high-margin annuity that still grew at a double-digit rate in fiscal 2026.
MFG — $1,379m, up 16%	19.1%	Manufacturing. Fusion, Inventor and Vault, covering product design, simulation, computer-aided manufacturing and product data management for discrete manufacturers.
M&E — $332m, up 5%	4.6%	Media and entertainment. Maya, 3ds Max, Flow Production Tracking and Flow Studio, used in film, television, games and visual effects. The smallest and slowest-growing family.
Other — $125m, up 6%	1.7%	Products and services that do not fall into the four named families, including consulting and certain legacy offerings.

By geography, fiscal 2026 revenue split as Americas $3,178m (44.1%, up 17%), EMEA $2,794m (38.8%, up 21%) and Asia-Pacific $1,234m (17.1%, up 11%). By revenue type, subscription was $6,743m, maintenance $33m and other $430m. From the first quarter of fiscal 2027 Autodesk folded the residual maintenance line into subscription, a presentation change rather than a change in the business.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Autodesk is a subscription business. Customers pay recurring fees for named-user product subscriptions, enterprise business agreements with large accounts, and consumption-based tokens under the Flex model. The company splits this internally into Design — the desktop-rooted franchises of AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor and Maya, worth $5,980m or 83% of fiscal 2026 revenue — and Make, the cloud products such as Autodesk Build, Fusion and Flow Production Tracking, worth $796m and growing 22%. The Make business is where the strategic bet sits, because it moves Autodesk from selling a design tool to an individual towards selling a project system to a whole firm.

Why customers stay. The moat is file formats, training and workflow. DWG and RVT are the interchange standards for their industries, so a firm that leaves Autodesk has to renegotiate how it exchanges drawings with every consultant, contractor and client it works with. University curricula and professional certification are built around the same products, so the labour market supplies Autodesk-trained staff by default. On top of that sits the multi-year contracted base: remaining performance obligations of $7,810m at 30 April 2026, of which $5,383m falls due within twelve months.

What changed in the model recently. Two shifts matter. The new transaction model, launched in June 2024 and rolled across North America and Europe by mid-2025, moved the billing relationship from resellers to Autodesk directly, with partners now quoting rather than transacting. That inflated fiscal 2026 billings growth to 30% against 18% revenue growth and makes period comparisons harder to read. Separately, the January 2026 restructuring reorganised sales and marketing, which management has warned carries near-term risk to billings while it beds in. Price action around these events can be followed on ChartsView Live Charts.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Autodesk's quarterly earnings releases, Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings, and SEC XBRL company facts. Autodesk's fiscal year ends on 31 January and is labelled one year ahead of the calendar year it mostly covers, so fiscal 2026 ran from 1 February 2025 to 31 January 2026. The Adjusted EPS column shows Autodesk's own non-GAAP diluted EPS, which excludes stock-based compensation, amortisation of acquired intangibles and restructuring charges.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 31 Jan 2022)	4,386	+15.7%	$2.24	$5.07	Nil	$2,650m
FY2023 (to 31 Jan 2023)	5,005	+14.1%	$3.78	$6.63	Nil	$2,300m
FY2024 (to 31 Jan 2024)	5,497	+9.8%	$4.19	$7.60	Nil	$2,300m
FY2025 (to 31 Jan 2025)	6,131	+11.5%	$5.12	$8.47	Nil	$2,300m
FY2026 (to 31 Jan 2026)	7,206	+17.5%	$5.23	$10.43	Nil	$2,500m

Revenue compounded at 13.2% a year across the four-year span from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2026, with the growth rate troughing at 9.8% in fiscal 2024 and re-accelerating to 17.5% in fiscal 2026. Autodesk has paid no dividend since April 2005 and has stated no intention to resume one; capital return runs entirely through buybacks, with $1,402m of stock repurchased in fiscal 2026. Long-term debt has been stable in a $2.3–2.65bn range throughout the period, standing at $2,500m at both 31 January 2026 and 30 April 2026, though this predates the MaintainX acquisition that closed on 3 August 2026.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q1 FY2027 (to 30 Apr 2026)	$1,934m	$2.99	$2.32
Q4 FY2026 (to 31 Jan 2026)	$1,957m	$2.85	$1.48
Q3 FY2026 (to 31 Oct 2025)	$1,853m	$2.67	$1.60
Q2 FY2026 (to 31 Jul 2025)	$1,763m	$2.62	$1.46
Q1 FY2026 (to 30 Apr 2025)	$1,633m	$2.29	$0.70
FY2026 total	$7,206m	$10.43	$5.23

The four fiscal 2026 quarterly adjusted figures sum exactly to the $10.43 full-year figure; the GAAP quarters sum to $5.24 against $5.23 reported, a rounding difference. Q1 fiscal 2027 is shown above the fiscal 2026 quarters because it is the most recently reported period; it is not included in the fiscal 2026 total.

Cash generation. Operating cash flow was $2,452m in fiscal 2026, up 53% from $1,607m, against capital expenditure of just $43m — the asset-light economics of a subscription software business. Over the twelve months to 30 April 2026, operating cash flow was approximately $2,781m and capital expenditure $52m. Depreciation and amortisation was $195m in fiscal 2026, of which $53m was amortisation of intangible assets. Cash and cash equivalents were $2,671m at 30 April 2026, with short-term marketable securities of $253m and a further $385m held long term, against long-term debt of $2,500m — a net cash position before the MaintainX acquisition.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Trailing twelve-month figures below cover the twelve months to 30 April 2026, calculated as fiscal 2026 less Q1 fiscal 2026 plus Q1 fiscal 2027: revenue $7,507m, GAAP diluted EPS $6.85, non-GAAP diluted EPS $11.13, operating income $1,886m, operating cash flow $2,781m and capital expenditure $52m.

Metric	Value
Share price	$257.96 (14 August 2026)
Market cap	~$54.5bn (211.1m shares at $257.96)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~37.7x (share price $257.96 / trailing twelve-month GAAP diluted EPS $6.85). On Autodesk's non-GAAP diluted EPS of $11.13 over the same twelve months the multiple is ~23.2x; the gap is driven principally by stock-based compensation.
P/E (forward)	~20.6x (share price $257.96 / FY2027 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $12.40–$12.65 issued 28 May 2026, midpoint $12.53). On the GAAP guidance range of $8.07–$8.63 the forward multiple is ~30.9x.
P/S (TTM)	~7.3x (market cap ~$54.5bn / trailing twelve-month revenue $7,507m)
Enterprise value	~$54.0bn (market cap ~$54.5bn + total debt $2,500m − cash $2,671m and short-term marketable securities $253m, per the 30 April 2026 balance sheet). Note this predates the MaintainX acquisition, which closed on 3 August 2026 for approximately $3.6bn in cash funded with roughly $1.6bn of cash plus debt; on a pro-forma basis enterprise value would be roughly $3.6bn higher at approximately $57.6bn.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~25.9x (EV ~$54.0bn / EBITDA ~$2,084m). EBITDA is trailing twelve-month GAAP operating income of $1,886m plus depreciation and amortisation of $198m from the cash flow statement. On the pro-forma enterprise value of ~$57.6bn the multiple is ~27.6x, since MaintainX contributed no meaningful EBITDA at more than $135m of annual recurring revenue.
P/FCF	~20.0x (market cap ~$54.5bn / FCF ~$2,729m; FCF = trailing twelve-month operating cash flow $2,781m − capital expenditure $52m). On management's fiscal 2027 free cash flow guidance of $2.725–2.800bn the multiple is essentially unchanged at ~19.7x on the midpoint.
Dividend yield	Nil — Autodesk has paid no dividend since April 2005
52-week high	$329.09
52-week low	$185.50
Short interest (% of float)	4.7% (8.88m shares short against a float of ~195.0m, settlement date 31 July 2026, up slightly from 8.77m the prior month)
Days to cover	4.0 days (31 July 2026 settlement)

7. What Are They Building

MaintainX and the move into operations. Announced on 28 May 2026 and completed on 3 August 2026, the approximately $3.6bn all-cash purchase of MaintainX is comfortably Autodesk's largest acquisition. MaintainX sells computerised maintenance management and asset-operations software, reported to be generating more than $135m of annual recurring revenue growing above 50%. Strategically it extends Autodesk from designing and building an asset into running it, which is the largest and longest phase of an asset's life and one Autodesk has never addressed.

Generative AI in the products. Autodesk Flow Studio, built on the Wonder Dynamics acquisition, launched the Wonder 3D generative model on 4 March 2026, turning text and image prompts into editable three-dimensional characters and objects for media production. In parallel, Autodesk Research continues to develop Project Bernini, an experimental generative model that produces functionally correct three-dimensional geometry from images, text or point clouds. Autodesk describes Bernini as a research proof of concept rather than a commercial product, with a possible path into the manufacturing cloud.

Platform and spending. The strategic frame is the Design and Make Platform, with Forma for AECO, Fusion for manufacturing and Flow for media as the three cloud industry clouds sitting on shared data. Research and development expenditure was $1,643m in fiscal 2026, up from $1,485m in fiscal 2025, with $421m spent in Q1 fiscal 2027 alone — roughly 22% of revenue, a level consistent with the company treating AI and cloud migration as an existential investment rather than a discretionary one.

8. Competitive Landscape

Autodesk competes against a fragmented set of specialists rather than one direct rival, with different competitors in each product family. Market capitalisations below were checked on 14 August 2026.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Dassault Systemes (EPA: DSY)	~€29.4bn	The broadest direct competitor across manufacturing and, through its own construction offering, AECO. CATIA and SOLIDWORKS compete with Inventor and Fusion, and Dassault's 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the closest structural analogue to Autodesk's Design and Make Platform.
PTC Inc (NASDAQ: PTC)	~$16.7bn	Manufacturing-focused competitor in computer-aided design and product lifecycle management via Creo and Windchill. Trades on a trailing P/E of ~14.9x against Autodesk's ~37.7x, with short interest of 10.1% of float versus Autodesk's 4.7%.
Bentley Systems (NASDAQ: BSY)	~$11.0bn	The purest infrastructure engineering competitor to Autodesk's AECO business, strongest in civil and utility asset design. Trades on a trailing P/E of ~39.7x, a similar rating to Autodesk, with a forward multiple of ~23.3x.
Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB)	~$13.4bn	Competes in construction technology, field data capture and the connected construction site, overlapping directly with Autodesk Construction Cloud. Trades on a forward P/E of ~14.0x, the cheapest of the construction-technology comparators.
Synopsys, following its acquisition of Ansys	Ansys no longer listed	Synopsys completed its acquisition of Ansys on 17 July 2025 and Ansys common stock was delisted from NASDAQ. Ansys simulation remains a competitor to Autodesk's simulation offerings, now inside a much larger electronic design automation group.
Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE)	~$107.5bn	Not a computer-aided design competitor, but the closest large-cap comparator for a creative-professional subscription franchise navigating generative AI disruption. Trades on a trailing P/E of ~14.8x and a forward P/E of ~9.8x, roughly a third of Autodesk's rating, illustrating how differently the market is pricing the AI risk to the two franchises.

9. Insider Activity

Andrew Anagnost has been President and Chief Executive Officer since June 2017 and remains in post. Janesh Moorjani joined as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in December 2024. Notably, the Form 4 activity identified for 2026 consists of open-market purchases by both the chief executive and the chief financial officer rather than the disposals more typical of a software company with heavy equity compensation.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Janesh Moorjani (EVP and CFO)	15 Jun 2026	Open-market purchase	2,500	$197.67	~$494,175	Not disclosed in filing summary
Andrew Anagnost (President and CEO)	2026	Open-market purchase	2,460	$202.66	~$498,500	Not disclosed in filing summary
Andrew Anagnost (President and CEO)	2026	Equity award	52,762	Not applicable	Not applicable	Annual equity grant
Janesh Moorjani (EVP and CFO)	2026	Equity award	12,424	Not applicable	Not applicable	Restricted stock unit grant
Aggregate insider activity	Feb 2026 to Aug 2026	Purchases only	Five reported transactions	$197.67 to $202.66	Not aggregated	Mixed grants and open-market purchases

Both executive purchases were made at prices between $197 and $203, materially below the $257.96 at which the shares traded on 14 August 2026 and close to the twelve-month low of $185.50. Readers should note that Form 4 coverage assembled from filing summaries may be incomplete; the authoritative record is the full set of Form 4 filings for Autodesk under SEC central index key 0000769397.

10. Key Risks

• Activist and governance overhang: Starboard Value settled with Autodesk in 2025, gaining two board seats, and has since launched a second challenge within roughly twelve months, reportedly nominating further directors. A proxy contest consumes management attention and creates pressure for margin action on a timetable set by an outside holder rather than by operational logic.
• Restructuring and sales-reorganisation execution: Autodesk cut approximately 9% of staff in February 2025 and a further 7%, roughly 1,000 roles, on 22 January 2026 at a pre-tax cost of $135–160m. In issuing fiscal 2027 guidance management explicitly warned of temporary risk to billings and revenue while the sales optimisation plan is operationalised. Sales disruption in a renewal-driven business is difficult to recover within a fiscal year.
• Construction and manufacturing cyclicality: AECO is 49.7% of revenue and manufacturing a further 19.1%, both tied to capital spending cycles. Management has separately noted softness in commercial construction offset by data centre demand, which concentrates the growth story in a single end market that is itself subject to a build-out cycle.
• AI disruption of seat-based design software: Autodesk's own forward-looking risk disclosures cite social and ethical issues around artificial intelligence and, explicitly, market reaction to disruption from artificial intelligence. If generative design tools reduce the number of licensed practitioners a firm needs, a per-seat subscription model faces structural pressure regardless of how good Autodesk's own AI is.
• Transaction-model transition risk: Autodesk names its ability to implement and expand the new transaction model, and its dependence on that model for the Flex consumption offering, as a disclosed risk factor. The transition distorts billings, deferred revenue and free cash flow across periods and complicates channel relationships with resellers who no longer transact.
• Subscription renewal and retention: The company discloses an inability to predict subscription renewal rates and their impact on future revenue as a risk factor. With Design revenue of $5,980m — 83% of the total — dependent on renewals, a modest deterioration in retention would outweigh most new-business gains.
• Acquisition integration and balance-sheet change: MaintainX closed on 3 August 2026 for approximately $3.6bn, funded with roughly $1.6bn of cash plus debt. This is Autodesk's largest deal by a wide margin, it takes the company into an adjacent market it has not operated in, and it converts a net cash balance sheet into a net debt one.
• Currency and trade exposure: EMEA is 38.8% of revenue and Asia-Pacific a further 17.1%, so reported results carry meaningful translation risk. Autodesk's guidance commentary and press releases repeatedly cite foreign exchange headwinds, tariffs and trade wars as factors that could affect results.

11. Recent Developments

• 03 Aug 2026 — MaintainX acquisition completed. Autodesk closed the approximately $3.6bn all-cash purchase of the asset-maintenance software company, ahead of the fiscal 2027 year-end target originally guided. It is Autodesk's largest acquisition to date.
• 17 Jun 2026 — 2026 annual meeting of stockholders held. The virtual meeting covered the election of directors and an amendment to the certificate of incorporation providing for officer exculpation.
• 28 May 2026 — First-quarter fiscal 2027 results and the MaintainX agreement. Revenue of $1,934m, up 18%, with GAAP diluted EPS of $2.32 and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $2.99. Full-year fiscal 2027 guidance was raised to revenue of $8,155–8,215m and non-GAAP EPS of $12.40–$12.65, excluding the pending MaintainX deal announced the same day.
• 06 May 2026 — Proxy statement filed. The definitive proxy for the 2026 annual meeting proposed the election of eleven directors alongside the officer exculpation amendment.
• 04 Mar 2026 — Wonder 3D launched in Autodesk Flow Studio. A generative artificial intelligence model that turns text and image prompts into editable three-dimensional characters and objects, built on the Wonder Dynamics technology.
• 26 Feb 2026 — Fiscal 2026 results and initial fiscal 2027 guidance. Full-year revenue of $7,206m, up 18%, with billings of $7,771m, up 30%, and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $10.43. Initial fiscal 2027 guidance was revenue of $8,100–8,170m, non-GAAP operating margin of 38.5–39% and free cash flow of $2.700–2.800bn.
• 22 Jan 2026 — Workforce reduction of approximately 7%. Autodesk announced the elimination of around 1,000 roles as part of a sales reorganisation, at a pre-tax cost of $135–160m, following a 9% reduction in February 2025.
• Feb 2026 to Aug 2026 — Renewed Starboard Value board challenge. Following a 2025 settlement that added directors Jeff Epstein and Christie Simons, Starboard has again nominated candidates to the board, reportedly including its own chief executive Jeff Smith. Exact filing dates for the 2026 nominations were not confirmed from primary sources as at 14 August 2026 and should be verified against Autodesk's SEC filings.

12. Key Dates

• 27 Aug 2026 — Second-quarter fiscal 2027 results, covering the quarter ended 31 July 2026, with a conference call at 2:00pm Pacific Time. Company guidance for the quarter is revenue of $2,005–2,015m, GAAP diluted EPS of $1.84–$1.97 and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $3.10–$3.14. This will be the first report to include any contribution from MaintainX.
• 17 Jun 2026 — 2026 annual meeting of stockholders, held virtually. This date has passed and is included for reference.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Third-quarter fiscal 2027 results, covering the quarter ending 31 October 2026, on Autodesk's established late-November reporting cadence.
• Expected Feb 2027 — Fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2027 results, covering the year ending 31 January 2027, together with initial fiscal 2028 guidance.
• Expected Jun 2027 — 2027 annual meeting of stockholders, at which any Starboard Value board nominations would be voted on if the matter is not settled beforehand.
• TBC — Investor day. No 2026 or 2027 investor day had been scheduled or announced by Autodesk as at 14 August 2026.

With results due within a fortnight of publication, the near-term set-up is unusually event-driven. Readers can follow the price action on ChartsView Live Charts, check the wider macro calendar that shapes construction and manufacturing demand on the Economic Calendar, and discuss the print in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

See also: Technical analysis on CrowdStrike · CrowdStrike company tracker

Last Updated: 27 August 2026

CrowdStrike Holdings sells cloud-delivered cybersecurity through a single lightweight agent called Falcon, and roughly 95% of what it earns is subscription revenue. The company reported its second quarter of fiscal 2027 after the close on 26 August 2026 — the day before this update — posting revenue of $1.47bn and record net new annual recurring revenue of $332.8m. It also completed a 4-for-1 stock split on 1 July 2026, which means every per-share figure published before June 2026 needs dividing by four before it can be compared with today's share price. This report sets out what the filings say, without ratings or price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CRWD — Nasdaq Global Select Market (Class A common stock)
Sector	Technology — infrastructure software (cybersecurity)
Headquarters	206 E. 9th Street, Suite 1400, Austin, Texas
Founded / listed	Founded 2011; IPO June 2019; S&P 500 constituent since 24 June 2024
CEO / Leadership	George Kurtz, co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer since November 2011. Burt W. Podbere is Chief Financial Officer (since September 2015); Michael Sentonas is President. No C-suite changes were disclosed in the FY2026 10-K executive officer table dated 4 March 2026.
Employees	10,698 full-time employees as at 31 January 2026 (FY2026 Form 10-K)
Revenue (latest reported fiscal year)	$4,812.0m for FY2026 (year ended 31 January 2026), up 21.7%
Trailing twelve-month revenue	$5,396.2m for the twelve months ended 31 July 2026
Net income (FY2026, GAAP)	Net loss of $162.5m; GAAP diluted loss per share of $0.16 on the post-split basis
Annual recurring revenue	$5.84bn as at 31 July 2026, up 25% year on year
Market cap	Approximately $192.6bn, based on the 26 August 2026 closing price of $189.18 and 1,018.3m shares outstanding
Dividend	None. CrowdStrike has never declared or paid a dividend
Fiscal year end	31 January. FY2027 ends 31 January 2027

Related ChartsView tools: Live Charts for price action, and the Economic Calendar for the macro backdrop.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Growth is accelerating, not decaying: net new ARR of $332.8m in Q2 FY2027 was a company record and rose 51% year on year, and ending ARR of $5.84bn grew 25% — faster than the 24% posted in Q1 FY2027 and in FY2026. Management raised its full-year net new ARR growth guidance by 630 basis points to 34% at the midpoint.
• Falcon Flex is compounding faster than the company: ARR sitting inside Falcon Flex accounts exceeded $2.29bn at 31 July 2026, up 101% year on year and now around 39% of total ARR. More than 380 accounts have expanded their commitment mid-term (the company calls this a "Reflex") at an average 26% ARR uplift, with roughly 100 repeat expanders adding a further 48%.
• Operating leverage has arrived: non-GAAP operating margin reached 25% in Q2 FY2027 against 22% a year earlier, with non-GAAP operating income of $371.6m up 46% on revenue growth of 26%. The GAAP operating loss narrowed from $105.5m to $33.2m and GAAP net income turned positive at $5.3m.
• The balance sheet is genuinely fortress-like: cash and equivalents of $5,013.8m at 31 July 2026 against a single $750.0m 3.00% senior note that does not mature until February 2029, giving roughly $4.3bn of net cash. Record Q2 operating cash flow of $530.3m equalled 36% of revenue.
• Platform consolidation is measurable: module adoption stood at 51% of subscription customers using six or more modules, 35% at seven or more and 26% at eight or more as at 31 July 2026, each up on the 50%/34%/24% recorded at 31 January 2026. Dollar-based net retention was 115% at the FY2026 year end.

Bear Case

• The multiple leaves no room for error: at $189.18 against FY2027 non-GAAP EPS guidance of $1.25 to $1.26, the stock trades on roughly 151 times guided adjusted earnings and about 35.7 times trailing revenue. Trailing GAAP earnings per share is negative.
• Stock-based compensation is enormous and still outgrowing revenue: share-based compensation plus related payroll taxes reached $399.0m in Q2 FY2027, or 27% of revenue, up 44% year on year against 26% revenue growth. The entire gap between the $371.6m non-GAAP operating profit and the $33.2m GAAP operating loss is that charge.
• Regulators are asking about ARR itself: the Q1 FY2027 10-Q discloses outstanding requests for information from both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to the company's recognition of revenue and reporting of ARR for transactions with certain customers, as well as the July 2024 incident. ARR is the metric the equity story rests on.
• Disclosure has been withdrawn as the multiple has expanded: quarterly dollar-based net retention was dropped during FY2026 and is now annual only, dollar-based gross retention is no longer quantified at all, the five-or-more module adoption rate has gone, and the total subscription customer count no longer appears in the 10-K.
• Capital intensity is rising sharply: purchases of property and equipment ran at 8% of revenue in Q2 FY2027 against 3% a year earlier, and half-year capital expenditure including capitalised software rose from $151.0m to $271.1m. Free cash flow margin of 26% in the quarter trailed the 36% operating cash flow margin.

3. Segments and Revenue Breakdown

CrowdStrike operates as a single reportable segment. It discloses revenue in two categories, and reports annual recurring revenue as its principal operating metric.

Segment / category	% of revenue	What it is
Subscription	95.2% ($1,400.3m in Q2 FY2027; $4,564.7m, or 94.9%, in FY2026)	Cloud-delivered modules on the Falcon platform, sold on multi-year commitments and billed largely annually in advance. Non-GAAP subscription gross margin was 81% in Q2 FY2027. This is the entire economic engine.
Professional services	4.8% ($70.6m in Q2 FY2027; $247.3m, or 5.1%, in FY2026)	Incident response, proactive advisory and implementation work. Deliberately low margin — GAAP services gross margin was 10% in Q2 FY2027 — and used primarily as a route into subscription relationships.
Falcon Flex (a cross-cutting commercial model, not a separate revenue line)	Over $2.29bn of ARR, roughly 39% of the total	A single multi-year platform commitment from which the customer draws down modules as needed, rather than licensing products one procurement cycle at a time. ARR in Flex accounts grew 101% year on year and there are more than 1,600 Flex customers.

Operating metrics as at 31 July 2026: ARR $5.84bn (up 25%); net new ARR in the quarter $332.8m (up 51%); module adoption 51% at six or more modules, 35% at seven or more, 26% at eight or more. Dollar-based net retention was last quantified at 115% for the year ended 31 January 2026; the Q2 FY2027 release states only that gross and net retention both increased, without giving a figure.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Around 95% of revenue is recurring subscription income from Falcon modules, billed largely annually in advance. That prepayment shows up as deferred revenue of $4,842.2m at 31 July 2026 ($3,497.1m current plus $1,345.1m non-current), which is more than three times the quarter's revenue and gives unusually good visibility. The remaining 5% is professional services, run near break-even on purpose.

The architecture is the moat. Falcon was built cloud-native around a single lightweight agent and a single data model. One sensor is deployed across the endpoint estate, and additional modules are switched on without redeploying anything — the company also offers in-application trial usage to cross-sell. That is the mechanical basis of the land-and-expand model, and it is why a customer running eight or more modules has in practice replaced an entire multi-vendor stack. Ripping Falcon out is an enterprise-wide project rather than a product swap.

Falcon Flex has become the primary go-to-market motion. Instead of separate purchase decisions per product, the customer signs one multi-year platform commitment and draws down modules against it. Mid-term expansions of that commitment are called Reflexes, and the disclosed economics are unusually specific: over 380 accounts have Reflexed at an average 26% ARR uplift, and roughly 100 that Reflexed more than once added a further 48%. In Q1 FY2027 CrowdStrike extended the model to its entire services portfolio with Flex for Services and a Zero Dollar Flex Fund.

Distribution is increasingly indirect. The FY2026 10-K names managed service providers and managed security service providers as a growing route to market, alongside the AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft marketplaces. An expanded alliance announced in FY2026 lets customers buy Falcon on the Microsoft Marketplace against an existing Azure Consumption Commitment — that is, burn committed Azure spend on CrowdStrike. Falcon Go serves businesses with 100 endpoints or fewer as a separate low-touch tier, and is excluded from the module-adoption statistics.

Certification as a barrier. FedRAMP High authorisations for Charlotte AI for Gov, External Attack Surface Management and Falcon for XIoT, plus ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification for AI management systems, are practical gatekeepers in government and regulated sectors that take competitors years to replicate.

5. Financial Health

All figures below come from CrowdStrike's quarterly earnings releases furnished on Form 8-K and its Form 10-K filings. Per-share amounts are stated on the post-split basis following the 4-for-1 stock split effected on 1 July 2026.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 31 Jan 2022)	1,451.6	+66.0%	$(0.26)	$0.17	Nil	$739.5m
FY2023 (to 31 Jan 2023)	2,241.2	+54.4%	$(0.20)	$0.39	Nil	$741.0m
FY2024 (to 31 Jan 2024)	3,055.6	+36.3%	$0.08‡	$0.77	Nil	$742.5m
FY2025 (to 31 Jan 2025)	3,953.6	+29.4%	$(0.02)	$0.81	Nil	$744.0m
FY2026 (to 31 Jan 2026)	4,812.0	+21.7%	$(0.16)	$0.93	Nil	$745.5m

† Per-share figures for FY2022 to FY2026 are the as-reported amounts divided by four to reflect the 4-for-1 split effected on 1 July 2026, consistent with the retroactive restatement in the Q2 FY2027 release. ‡ FY2024 GAAP diluted EPS was originally reported as $0.37 (pre-split) on net income attributable to CrowdStrike of $89.3m; the figure shown is the revised amount carried in the FY2026 Form 10-K following an immaterial correction to the timing of stock-based compensation recognition on awards granted in FY2022 and FY2023. Long-term debt is the carrying value of the $750.0m 3.00% senior notes due February 2029 net of unamortised issuance costs — the year-on-year increase is amortisation, not new borrowing, and there is no current portion of debt in any year shown. CrowdStrike reports no dividend in any period; capital return is via buyback only.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 FY2027 (to 31 Jul 2026)	1,470.9	$0.31	$0.01
Q1 FY2027 (to 30 Apr 2026)	1,385.6	$0.28	$0.03
Q4 FY2026 (to 31 Jan 2026)	1,305.4	$0.28	$0.04
Q3 FY2026 (to 31 Oct 2025)	1,234.2	$0.24	$(0.04)
Q2 FY2026 (to 31 Jul 2025)	1,169.0	$0.06	$(0.02)
FY2026 total (to 31 Jan 2026)	4,812.0	$0.93	$(0.16)

Q3 FY2026 revenue of $1,234.2m is derived by subtraction (FY2026 total $4,812.0m less Q4 $1,305.4m less first-half revenue of $2,272.4m); the company described it as "$1.23 billion" in the release dated 2 December 2025. Quarterly per-share figures are likewise stated on the post-split basis and rounded to two decimal places, so small amounts compress.

Cash flow and balance sheet. FY2026 operating cash flow was $1,612.3m against capital expenditure of $370.9m (property and equipment $302.1m plus capitalised internal-use software $68.8m), giving free cash flow of $1,241.5m. On a trailing twelve-month basis to 31 July 2026, operating cash flow was $2,016.6m and capital expenditure $491.0m, giving free cash flow of roughly $1,525.6m. Depreciation and amortisation was $250.2m in FY2026, plus a separate $31.2m of intangible amortisation. Cash and equivalents stood at $5,013.8m at 31 July 2026, with no separate short-term investments line; goodwill rose from $1,363.3m to $2,251.4m in six months on $881.4m of acquisition spend.

Guidance issued 26 August 2026. For FY2027 the company guides to total revenue of $5,991.1m to $6,011.1m, ending ARR of $6,603.0m to $6,611.9m, non-GAAP income from operations of $1,497.2m to $1,508.4m and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.25 to $1.26 on 1,044m shares. For Q3 FY2027 it guides to revenue of $1,523.2m to $1,529.2m and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.31. No GAAP guidance is given; the company states a reconciliation is not available without unreasonable effort. Note that a change to a 21.0% long-term projected non-GAAP tax rate, from 22.5%, was adopted prospectively from Q2 FY2026 and prior-period non-GAAP EPS was not restated.

6. Valuation

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	~$192.6bn (26 August 2026 close of $189.18 × 1,018.3m shares outstanding)
Enterprise value	~$188.4bn (market cap $192.6bn + total debt $0.75bn − cash $5.01bn, per the 31 July 2026 balance sheet). Enterprise value is below market cap because CrowdStrike holds roughly $4.3bn of net cash
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	n/m — trailing twelve-month GAAP diluted EPS is negative at $(0.04). For reference, on FY2026 non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.93 (post-split) the stock trades at roughly 202 times adjusted earnings
P/E (forward)	~151x (share price $189.18 divided by the midpoint of company FY2027 non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance of $1.25 to $1.26, issued 26 August 2026). No GAAP guidance is provided by the company
P/S (TTM)	~35.7x (market cap $192.6bn / trailing twelve-month revenue $5,396.2m to 31 July 2026)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	n/m — trailing GAAP EBITDA is only about $0.20bn (TTM GAAP operating loss of $133.0m plus TTM depreciation and amortisation of $332.6m, being $291.0m of D&A plus $41.7m of intangible amortisation), which computes to roughly 940x and carries no information. On the company's own non-GAAP operating income of $1,346m for the trailing twelve months, the equivalent multiple is about 140x
P/FCF	~126x (market cap $192.6bn / trailing twelve-month free cash flow $1,525.6m; free cash flow = operating cash flow $2,016.6m − capital expenditure $491.0m, being purchases of property and equipment plus capitalised internal-use software, for the twelve months to 31 July 2026). On the FY2026 fiscal year alone the multiple is about 155x
Price/book	~37x (market cap $192.6bn / total stockholders' equity $5,139.5m at 31 July 2026). Goodwill of $2,251.4m is 44% of that equity
52-week high	$227.50 (post-split basis)
52-week low	$85.68 (post-split basis)
Short interest (% of float)	2.41% (24,164,922 shares short against a float of 1,000,511,021), settlement date 14 August 2026 — before the 26 August earnings release, so this positioning predates the print
Days to cover	3.02 days, same 14 August 2026 settlement date
Dividend yield	Nil — no dividend has ever been paid

7. What Are They Building

Agentic AI is the stated centre of the roadmap. The Charlotte AI AgentWorks Ecosystem launched on 25 March 2026 with AWS, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic, Accenture, Deloitte, Kroll, Salesforce and Telefónica Tech as partners, alongside Agentic MDR delivered through Falcon Complete. In Q2 FY2027 the company unveiled Continuous Identity for AI Agents, extended Falcon AIDR across AI gateway partners including Databricks, Google Cloud, Kong, LiteLLM, Microsoft Azure and TrueFoundry, and formed a strategic collaboration with Cerebras Systems.

Project QuiltWorks is an attempt to own an industry standard. Launched 23 April 2026, it is a coalition to remediate vulnerabilities discovered by frontier AI models, with OpenAI and Anthropic as founding partners alongside Accenture, EY, IBM Cybersecurity Services and Kroll. It was expanded on 5 May 2026 to Cognizant, HCLTech, Infosys, KPMG, NTT DATA, TCS and Wipro; on 28 May 2026 into cyber insurance with Coalition, Liberty Mutual, Lockton, Marsh and Resilience; on 17 June 2026 with AWS into the cloud attack surface; and during Q2 FY2027 to small and medium businesses.

Buying capability rather than building it. Five acquisitions in roughly twelve months: Onum (approximately $290m) and Pangea (approximately $260m) in September 2025, then SGNL (approximately $740m, agreed 8 January 2026) for identity and continuous authorisation and Seraphic Security (agreed 13 January 2026, price undisclosed) for browser runtime security, both closing in Q1 FY2027 for $881.4m of cash. On 16 July 2026 the company agreed to acquire the intellectual property of XM Cyber — more than 45 patents and proprietary source code, with no revenue or customers transferring — expected to close in the second half of FY2027.

Sovereign and regional capacity. A partnership with Schwarz Digits and its STACKIT cloud is intended to deliver sovereign cybersecurity across Europe, expanded on 16 July 2026. Regional clouds have been announced for Saudi Arabia, India and the UAE, with an MoU signed with Aramco.

Selling on top of competitors. Falcon OverWatch for Defender, launched in Q1 FY2027, provides CrowdStrike-managed threat hunting on Microsoft's own endpoint agent — a route into accounts where Defender is already entrenched, and a candid read on where the installed base sits.

8. Peers and Competitive Position

Market capitalisations below were re-checked on 27 August 2026 against the previous session's closing prices.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025/2026 metric
Palo Alto Networks (PANW)	~$276.5bn	FY2025 revenue $9,221.5m, up 14.9%; trailing twelve-month revenue $10,606.5m. Completed the $25bn acquisition of CyberArk on 11 February 2026, so CYBR no longer trades as a separate security
Fortinet (FTNT)	~$115.6bn	FY2025 revenue $6,799.6m, up 14.2%; Q2 2026 revenue $2.05bn, up 26%, with FY2026 guidance raised to $8.02bn to $8.18bn
Cloudflare (NET)	~$101.4bn	FY2025 revenue $2,167.9m, up 29.8% — the fastest grower in the group, and the only peer trading on a higher revenue multiple than CrowdStrike
Zscaler (ZS)	~$27.5bn	FY2025 revenue (year to 31 July 2025) $2,673.1m, up 23.3%
SentinelOne (S)	~$7.0bn	FY2026 revenue (year to 31 January 2026) $1,001.3m, up 21.9% — its first year above $1bn. Shares the same fiscal calendar as CrowdStrike, which is 4.8 times its revenue and 27 times its market value
Microsoft (MSFT)	~$3,685.8bn	FY2026 total revenue (year to 30 June 2026) $331,839m. Microsoft does not separately disclose security revenue, so no like-for-like figure exists; Defender is bundled into E5 at near-zero marginal cost to the customer

On enterprise value to trailing revenue, CrowdStrike sits at roughly 35 times against Palo Alto at about 26 times, Cloudflare at about 40 times, Fortinet at about 17 times, Zscaler at about 9 times and SentinelOne at about 7 times. The field is consolidating: Palo Alto's absorption of CyberArk creates a single vendor spanning network, endpoint, cloud and identity, which is the same platform argument CrowdStrike makes.

9. Insider Activity

George Kurtz, co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, has been the most active seller. His disposals are made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on 6 January 2026, and he has sold in at least nine separate windows between 25 June and 18 August 2026. Note the split trap: sales before 2 July 2026 were executed at pre-split prices of roughly $670 to $695, which is the same valuation level as the roughly $175 to $212 seen afterwards. Chief Financial Officer Burt W. Podbere's August sale was explicitly to cover tax withholding on restricted stock unit vesting rather than a discretionary disposal.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
George Kurtz (CEO)	18 Aug 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$209.72 – $211.51	Not itemised	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
George Kurtz (CEO)	4 Aug 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$204.07 – $207.22	Not itemised	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
Burt W. Podbere (CFO)	3 Aug 2026	Sale	7,622	$194.34 weighted average	~$1.48m	Not a 10b5-1 plan — sell-to-cover for RSU tax withholding under issuer policy
George Kurtz (CEO)	30 – 31 Jul 2026	Sale (15 tranches)	20,000	$178.72 – $191.45	~$3.70m	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
George Kurtz (CEO)	28 Jul 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$174.70 – $183.24	Not itemised	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
George Kurtz (CEO)	22 – 23 Jul 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$182.52 – $192.52	Not itemised	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
George Kurtz (CEO)	9 Jul 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$188.55 – $196.82	Not itemised	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
George Kurtz (CEO)	25 Jun 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$671.68 – $690.32 (pre-split)	Not itemised	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 Jan 2026
Burt W. Podbere (CFO)	22 Jun 2026	Sale	Not itemised	$685.05 – $694.49 (pre-split)	Not itemised	Per Form 4 filing

Every 2026 Form 4 reviewed is a disposal; no open-market insider purchases were found. After the 31 July 2026 sales Kurtz held 8,083,544 shares directly, including shares issuable on RSU vesting, plus 400,000 indirectly through the Kurtz Family Dynasty Trust. Podbere held 696,818 shares directly after his August sale.

10. Key Risks

• Valuation: roughly 151 times guided FY2027 adjusted earnings and about 35.7 times trailing revenue, with negative trailing GAAP earnings. The shares fell from $225.53 on 13 August 2026 to $185.38 on 25 August 2026 — a 17.8% drawdown — before the Q2 print, which is the sort of move this multiple invites on any disappointment.
• Regulatory inquiry into ARR reporting: both the Department of Justice and the SEC have outstanding requests for information covering the recognition of revenue and reporting of ARR for transactions with certain customers. This is an accounting question aimed squarely at the headline metric, not merely outage liability.
• Stock-based compensation dilution: $399.0m of share-based compensation and related payroll taxes in Q2 FY2027, equal to 27% of revenue and growing 44% year on year. Weighted basic shares rose from 999.6m to 1,019.4m over the year despite $175.6m of buybacks, so repurchases are not yet offsetting dilution.
• Competition from consolidating platforms: Palo Alto Networks is a roughly $276bn company that has absorbed CyberArk for $25bn, and Microsoft bundles Defender into E5 at near-zero marginal cost. CrowdStrike's own launch of Falcon OverWatch for Defender is an acknowledgement of how entrenched the competing agent already is.
• Reduced metric transparency: quarterly dollar-based net retention, dollar-based gross retention, the five-or-more module adoption rate and the total subscription customer count have all been withdrawn within roughly eighteen months. Less disclosure while defending a premium multiple and while regulators are asking about ARR is a governance point worth naming.
• Acquisition integration and goodwill: goodwill rose 65% in six months, from $1,363.3m to $2,251.4m, on $881.4m of cash paid for acquisitions in Q1 FY2027 alone. Goodwill is now roughly 44% of stockholders' equity, and intangible amortisation nearly doubled year on year to $25.7m in the half.
• Rising capital intensity: property and equipment purchases moved from 3% of revenue in Q2 FY2026 to 8% in Q2 FY2027, and half-year capital expenditure rose from $151.0m to $271.1m on AI infrastructure. If that continues to scale, the free cash flow conversion underpinning the valuation weakens.
• Concentration of renewal risk through Falcon Flex: more than $2.29bn of ARR, roughly 39% of the total, now sits inside multi-year Flex commitments. No customer above 10% of revenue is disclosed, so single-customer concentration is not evidenced, but Flex converts many small renewals into fewer, larger and more negotiable events.
• Residual outage litigation: Delta Air Lines' claim, seeking damages for approximately $380m of lost revenue and $170m of costs, survived dismissal on gross negligence on 16 May 2025 and remains in discovery with no trial date set. Customer commitment packages granted after the July 2024 incident are named as a forward-looking risk factor in the filings.
• AI cuts both ways: the growth case is staked on AI security demand, but the same technology lowers barriers for competitors and adversaries. CrowdStrike's own 2026 Threat Hunting Report found AI is now embedded across modern adversary operations. If AI-security budget proves to be re-labelled existing spend rather than incremental, the ARR reacceleration is not durable.

11. Recent Developments

• 26 Aug 2026 — Q2 FY2027 results beat and full-year outlook raised again. Revenue of $1,470.9m rose 26%, ARR reached $5.84bn (up 25%) and net new ARR of $332.8m was a record, up 51%. Falcon Flex ARR exceeded $2.29bn, up 101%. GAAP net income turned positive at $5.3m and non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.31. Record Q2 operating cash flow of $530.3m and free cash flow of $377.4m. FY2027 net new ARR growth guidance was raised by 630 basis points to 34% at the midpoint. The shares rose as much as 12% in extended trading.
• 18 Aug 2026 — Chief Executive continued programmatic selling. George Kurtz filed a further Form 4 covering sales at $209.72 to $211.51 under the Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 6 January 2026.
• 16 Jul 2026 — XM Cyber intellectual property agreed and Schwarz Digits partnership expanded. CrowdStrike agreed to acquire more than 45 patents and proprietary source code from XM Cyber, with no revenue or customers transferring; XM Cyber continues as a standalone business under an IP licence. Expected to close in the second half of FY2027.
• 1 Jul 2026 — 4-for-1 stock split effected. Distributed after the close in the form of a stock dividend of three additional shares per share held, with a record date of 25 June 2026. Split-adjusted trading began 2 July 2026.
• 17 Jun 2026 — Project QuiltWorks extended with AWS. The coalition's remit widened to the cloud attack surface.
• 3 Jun 2026 — Q1 FY2027 results and split announcement. Revenue of $1,385.6m rose 26%, ARR reached $5.51bn (up 24%) and record Q1 net new ARR of $255.8m rose 32%. Record operating cash flow of $590.9m and free cash flow of $468.5m. FY2027 net new ARR guidance was raised 520 basis points, and the 4-for-1 split was announced.
• 20 May 2026 — Fifth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the passenger class action. The consolidated airline-passenger class action arising from the July 2024 incident was disposed of on appeal.
• 28 May 2026 — QuiltWorks extended into cyber insurance. Coalition, Liberty Mutual, Lockton, Marsh and Resilience joined to address financial exposure.
• 16 Apr 2026 — Western District of Texas derivative suits dismissed. This followed dismissals of the consolidated Delaware Chancery derivative actions on 18 March 2026 and a second consolidated set on 7 April 2026.
• 6 Apr 2026 — buyback authorisation increased to $1.5bn. The board authorised an additional $500.0m on top of the $1.0bn programme approved in June 2025. There is no fixed expiry.
• 25 Mar 2026 — Charlotte AI AgentWorks Ecosystem launched at RSA. Partners included AWS, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic, Accenture, Deloitte, Kroll, Salesforce and Telefónica Tech, alongside Agentic MDR through Falcon Complete.
• 3 Mar 2026 — Q4 and FY2026 results, and a ten-year ARR target. Q4 revenue of $1,305.4m rose 23%, ARR reached $5.25bn and FY2026 net new ARR passed $1bn for the first time. The company set a target of $20bn of ending ARR by FY2036.
• 3 Feb 2026 — Seraphic Security acquisition closed. The SGNL acquisition closed in the same quarter, with combined cash consideration of $881.4m.
• 12 Jan 2026 — securities class action dismissed. Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas dismissed all Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and Section 20(a) claims without prejudice; the lead plaintiff elected not to file an amended complaint by the 26 January 2026 deadline.

12. Key Dates

• 31 Aug 2026 — Fal.Con 2026 opens at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, with the Day Zero Threat Research Summit. The company's tenth and largest Fal.Con, running to 3 September 2026, with more than 10,000 attendees expected and in-person registration sold out. The most likely near-term source of product news.
• Expected Sep 2026 — Form 10-Q for Q2 FY2027. Only the Form 8-K had been furnished as at 27 August 2026; the Q1 10-Q followed its release by one day, so this filing is imminent. Worth reading for the updated buyback balance, legal proceedings and XM Cyber disclosure.
• 31 Oct 2026 — Q3 FY2027 quarter end, per the guidance table in the 26 August 2026 release.
• Expected Dec 2026 — Q3 FY2027 results. CrowdStrike had not announced a date as at 27 August 2026; it typically confirms roughly three weeks ahead. Q3 FY2026 was reported on 2 December 2025.
• Expected Jan 2027 — XM Cyber intellectual property acquisition expected to complete, within the company-stated window of the second half of FY2027 and subject to regulatory approvals.
• 31 Jan 2027 — FY2027 fiscal year end.
• Expected Mar 2027 — Q4 and full-year FY2027 results. FY2026 was reported on 3 March 2026 and FY2025 on 4 March 2025.
• TBC — Delta Air Lines v. CrowdStrike. Discovery is ongoing in the Metro Atlanta Business Case Division and no trial date has been set.
• Expected Feb 2029 — the $750.0m 3.00% senior notes mature. This is the company's only debt instrument.

No investor day has been announced for the forward period, and no lock-up applies — CrowdStrike listed in June 2019. Discussion of these dates continues on the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 23 August 2026

Cadence Design Systems sells the software that chips are designed with. It is one half of an effective duopoly with Synopsys in electronic design automation, and over the last three years it has spent heavily to extend from chip design into the wider world of simulation and physical modelling. Fiscal 2025 revenue reached $5.30bn, up 14.1%, and the first half of 2026 has run hotter still, with Q2 revenue up 24.2% and backlog at a record $8.1bn. Against that, the shares are roughly 23% below their June 2026 high, the company is three years into a five-year federal probation over export-control violations, and the market has begun asking out loud whether agentic AI eventually commoditises the tools Cadence rents out. This report sets out what the filings say, without opinions or price targets. Live price action is on our Live Charts page.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CDNS, Nasdaq Global Select Market
Sector / industry	Information Technology — electronic design automation, semiconductor IP, system design and analysis software
Headquarters	San Jose, California, United States
Founded	1988, from the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD
CEO / Leadership	Anirudh Devgan, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO since December 2021). John M. Wall, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Employees	Approximately 13,800 as at 31 December 2025 (FY2025 Form 10-K)
Revenue (FY2025)	$5,296.8m, up 14.1% year on year
Net income (FY2025)	$1,108.9m GAAP; GAAP diluted EPS $4.06
Trailing twelve month revenue	$5,837.6m to 30 June 2026
Share price	$319.02 at the close on 21 August 2026
Market cap	Approximately $87.99bn (21 August 2026)
Dividend	None. Cadence has never paid a cash dividend; capital is returned through buybacks
Fiscal year end	31 December (calendar-year basis from fiscal 2023 onward)

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Duopoly economics in a structurally growing market: Cadence and Synopsys together hold roughly 60% of the electronic design automation market, with Siemens EDA taking most of the remainder. Gross margin runs near 86% and FY2025 non-GAAP operating margin was 44.6%. Chip complexity rises every node, and design tools are a small cost line inside a very large capital decision.
• Growth is accelerating, not fading: revenue grew 14.1% in FY2025 and 24.2% year on year in Q2 2026. Backlog reached a record $8.1bn at 30 June 2026 and current remaining performance obligations rose to $4.2bn from $3.5bn nine months earlier. Management has raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance twice, most recently on 27 July 2026 to $6.26bn to $6.34bn.
• The Hexagon deal buys a second engine: completing the roughly €2.7bn acquisition of Hexagon's Design and Engineering business on 23 February 2026 pushed Cadence properly into multiphysics simulation. System Design and Analysis revenue grew 37% year on year in Q2 2026 and now represents 17% of the mix, up from 15% a year earlier.
• Cadence is building the AI layer rather than waiting for it: the AI Super Agents portfolio (ChipStack, ViraStack, InnoStack and AuraStack) now spans chip, PCB and packaging design. The NVIDIA partnership announced 15 April 2026 puts Cadence solvers on CUDA-X and Omniverse, and the Millennium M2000 supercomputer is being sold as a physical product alongside the software.

Bear Case

• Valuation leaves nothing to chance: at $319.02 the shares trade on roughly 63x trailing GAAP earnings, 39x trailing non-GAAP earnings, 15x trailing sales and about 52x trailing free cash flow. That is priced for sustained high-teens growth and full delivery on the Hexagon integration.
• AI could commoditise the toolchain it is meant to sell: the shares fell 9.6% in a single July 2026 session after Moonshot AI disclosed that its Kimi K3 model had completed a full semiconductor design flow autonomously in 48 hours using only open-source EDA tools. Whether or not that scales, it crystallised the risk that the agent layer, not the tool layer, captures the value.
• China is both a growth driver and a policy hostage: China was 13% of FY2025 revenue and 15% of Q2 2026 revenue. The 2025 quarterly path of 11%, 9%, 18% and 12% shows exactly how quickly a licence action closes the tap; the Bureau of Industry and Security imposed licence requirements in May 2025 and rescinded them in early July 2025.
• The balance sheet has flipped from net cash to net debt: Cadence paid $2.10bn in cash for acquisitions in the first half of 2026. Cash fell from $3.00bn at year-end to $1.44bn at 30 June 2026 against $2.48bn of long-term debt. Goodwill and acquired intangibles of $6.79bn now nearly equal total equity of $6.86bn, and intangible amortisation has risen from 2% to 5% of revenue, cutting the FY2026 GAAP EPS guide even as revenue guidance rose.

3. Revenue Segments

Cadence does not report conventional operating segments. It discloses a revenue mix by product category, shown below for fiscal 2025.

Segment / product category	% of revenue	What it is
Core EDA	70% (FY2025); 68% in Q2 2026	Digital and custom chip design, verification, simulation and the Palladium Z3 and Protium X3 hardware emulation and prototyping systems. Grew about 13% in FY2025 and 18% year on year in Q2 2026.
System Design and Analysis	16% (FY2025); 17% in Q2 2026	Multiphysics simulation, PCB and package design, 3D-IC and, since February 2026, the acquired Hexagon Design and Engineering portfolio. Grew about 13% in FY2025 and 37% year on year in Q2 2026.
Semiconductor IP	14% (FY2025); 15% in Q2 2026	Licensed silicon building blocks including HBM, UCIe, PCIe, DDR and SerDes interfaces, plus the Arm Artisan foundation IP business acquired in August 2025. Grew about 25% in FY2025 and more than 40% year on year in Q2 2026.

By geography in fiscal 2025: Americas 47%, Other Asia 19%, Europe, Middle East and Africa 15%, China 13% and Japan 6%. By revenue type, product and maintenance was $4,822m or 91% of the total, with services at $475m or 9%.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Cadence licenses computational software under mostly time-based licences, with revenue recognised ratably across the licence term. Emulation and prototyping hardware, and certain IP arrangements, are recognised upfront, which is why hardware-heavy quarters distort both revenue growth and margin. Product and maintenance was 91% of fiscal 2025 revenue and services 9%. The ratable model is what allows management to guide a full year with the precision it does.

Where the switching costs sit. A design team that has taped out on a Cadence flow has calibrated its methodology, its foundry-certified reference flows and its verification signoff against those specific tools. Changing vendor mid-programme risks a respin, and a respin at an advanced node costs vastly more than the licence. Cadence reinforces this with foundry certification: AI reference flows certified for Intel 18A-P and Intel 14A in July 2026, and flows across TSMC N3, N2, A16 and A14 announced in April 2026.

Visibility is the real asset. Backlog stood at $8.1bn at 30 June 2026, up from $7.8bn at the end of 2025 and $7.0bn at 30 September 2025. Contracted but unsatisfied performance obligations were $7.8bn at 31 December 2025, of which management expected to recognise 53% within twelve months. Current remaining performance obligations rose to $4.2bn at 30 June 2026.

Reinvestment intensity. Research and development was $1,768.8m in fiscal 2025, or 33.4% of revenue, up from $1,549.1m in fiscal 2024. First-half 2026 R&D was $1,039.7m against $881.2m a year earlier. This is a business that spends a third of its revenue defending its position.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from Cadence's Form 10-K filings, quarterly earnings press releases and SEC XBRL company facts. Cadence has never paid a cash dividend, so that column reads Nil throughout.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021 (ended 1 Jan 2022)	2,988.2	+11.4%	$2.50	$3.29	Nil	$347.6m
FY2022	3,561.7	+19.2%	$3.09	$4.27	Nil	$648.1m
FY2023	4,090.0	+14.8%	$3.82	$5.15	Nil	$299.8m†
FY2024	4,641.3	+13.5%	$3.85	$5.97	Nil	$2,476.2m
FY2025	5,296.8	+14.1%	$4.06	$7.14	Nil	$2,480.2m

† A further $349.3m was classified as the current portion of long-term debt at 31 December 2023. The step-up in fiscal 2024 reflects $3.197bn of debt issued against $1.350bn repaid during that year. Adjusted EPS is Cadence's own non-GAAP diluted EPS as reported in each year's Q4 earnings release.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (ended 30 Jun 2026)	1,584.5	$2.11	$1.33
Q1 2026	1,474.2	$1.96	$1.23
Q4 2025	1,440.1	$1.99	$1.42
Q3 2025	1,338.8	$1.93	$1.05
Q2 2025	1,275.4	$1.65	$0.59‡
Q1 2025	1,242.4	$1.57	$1.00
FY2025 total	5,296.8	$7.14	$4.06

‡ Q2 2025 GAAP EPS carries a $128.5m charge for the contingent liability relating to the export-control settlement, which cost 10.1 percentage points of GAAP operating margin and $0.47 of GAAP EPS in that quarter.

Cash flow and balance sheet, fiscal 2025. Operating cash flow was $1,728.8m against capital expenditure of $141.9m, giving free cash flow of $1,586.9m. Depreciation and amortisation was $227.8m and GAAP operating income was $1,492.0m, a 28.2% margin. Cash and equivalents stood at $3,001.3m with short-term investments of $154.2m, against long-term debt of $2,480.2m and no current portion. Fiscal 2025 share buybacks were $925.0m.

What changed in the first half of 2026. Operating cash flow of $990.7m and capital expenditure of $101.4m were overwhelmed by $2,100.3m of cash paid for business combinations. Cash fell to $1,440.4m at 30 June 2026 while long-term debt held at $2,482.2m, moving the group from roughly $675m of net cash at year-end to about $1.04bn of net debt. Goodwill rose from $2,749.1m to $4,914.8m and acquired intangibles from $718.2m to $1,874.5m. Depreciation and amortisation nearly doubled to $201.6m for the half.

Guidance. On 27 July 2026 management raised full-year 2026 guidance for the second consecutive quarter, to revenue of $6.26bn to $6.34bn, GAAP diluted EPS of $4.76 to $4.86, non-GAAP diluted EPS of $8.05 to $8.15, non-GAAP operating margin of 43.75% to 44.75% and operating cash flow of approximately $2bn. Note that the GAAP EPS guide has fallen from the $4.95 to $5.05 range issued in February, entirely because of acquisition-related amortisation.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately $87.99bn (275.8m shares at the $319.02 close on 21 August 2026)
Enterprise value	Approximately $89.0bn (market cap $87.99bn plus total debt $2.48bn less cash $1.44bn, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	63.4x on trailing twelve month GAAP diluted EPS of $5.03 (Q3 2025 $1.05, Q4 2025 $1.42, Q1 2026 $1.23, Q2 2026 $1.33). On the equivalent trailing non-GAAP EPS of $7.99 the multiple is approximately 39.9x
P/E (forward)	39.4x on the FY2026 non-GAAP EPS guidance midpoint of $8.10, and 66.3x on the FY2026 GAAP EPS guidance midpoint of $4.81, both from the 27 July 2026 release
P/S (TTM)	15.1x (market cap $87.99bn over trailing twelve month revenue of $5,837.6m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 42.5x (EV $89.0bn over EBITDA of $2,092.9m; EBITDA = trailing twelve month GAAP operating income of $1,770.1m plus trailing D&A of $322.8m, using the wider cash-flow-statement depreciation and amortisation figure. The Q2 2026 operating income component is derived from the reported 28.4% GAAP operating margin on $1,584.5m of revenue)
P/FCF	Approximately 52.4x (market cap $87.99bn over free cash flow of $1,678.7m; FCF = trailing twelve month operating cash flow $1,854.9m less capital expenditure $176.2m)
Price/book	12.8x on book value per share of $24.90
52-week high	$416.69, reached 2 June 2026
52-week low	$262.75, reached 3 February 2026
Short interest (% of float)	2.23% of a 274.2m share float, on 6.10m shares short at the 31 July 2026 settlement date. MarketBeat recorded 2.25% on 6.19m shares at the 15 July 2026 settlement
Days to cover	2.6 days at the 31 July 2026 settlement; MarketBeat calculated 4.08 days at the 15 July settlement on a lower average volume base
Dividend yield	Nil. Cadence pays no dividend

For scheduled macro events that move the semiconductor complex, see our Economic Calendar.

7. What Are They Building

AI Super Agents. ChipStack, introduced in the fourth quarter of 2025, is an agentic system for RTL design and verification that calls the underlying Cadence tools autonomously. Management reported early deployments at more than ten leading customers with productivity improvements described as up to tenfold. On 15 July 2026 Cadence launched AuraStack, billed as the first agentic AI platform for PCB and advanced packaging, completing a portfolio that with ViraStack and InnoStack now covers the full electronic system design flow.

NVIDIA and the Millennium supercomputer. At CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley on 15 and 16 April 2026, Cadence and NVIDIA announced an expanded partnership putting Cadence EDA and system design solutions onto CUDA-X, NVIDIA AI-physics libraries and Omniverse. The Millennium M2000 Supercomputer, built on NVIDIA infrastructure, is claimed to deliver up to 80 times greater throughput and up to 20 times lower power on target workloads, with named early users including Argonne National Laboratory, Honda R&D, Samsung and SK Hynix.

Google Cloud and Gemini. Announced the same week, Google's Gemini models have been integrated with the ChipStack AI Super Agent, with the combined offering distributed through Google Cloud Marketplace.

Foundry alignment. Cadence expanded its TSMC partnership in April 2026 to cover agentic AI, advanced IP and certified design flows across N3, N2, A16 and A14, including support for TSMC's NanoFlex Pro standard-cell architecture and stacked-die reference flow. In July 2026 it certified AI reference flows for Intel 18A-P and Intel 14A, and a multi-year Intel agreement covering IP, EDA and design-technology co-optimisation on Intel 14A was flagged on the Q2 2026 call as a meaningful growth driver.

Hardware. Palladium Z3 emulation and Protium X3 prototyping had a record fiscal 2025 with more than 30 new customers, and seven of the top ten customers took both platforms. Q2 2026 was another record quarter with twelve new customers.

8. Competitive Landscape

Electronic design automation is a concentrated market. TrendForce estimated 2024 shares at Synopsys 31%, Cadence 30% and Siemens EDA 13%, a combined 74%. The total EDA market was estimated at roughly $17.6bn in 2025. The competitive picture changed materially on 17 July 2025 when Synopsys closed its approximately $34.9bn acquisition of Ansys, creating a combined EDA and multiphysics business substantially larger than Cadence.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Synopsys (SNPS)	$76.18bn at the $397.87 close, 21 August 2026	FY2025 revenue $7.054bn, up 15%. FY2026 guidance of approximately $9.61bn including roughly $2.9bn from the acquired Ansys business
Keysight Technologies (KEYS)	$53.84bn at the $316.13 close, 21 August 2026	FY2025 revenue $5.37bn for the year ended 31 October 2025, up from $4.98bn
Autodesk (ADSK)	$53.59bn at the $253.83 close, 21 August 2026	FY2026 revenue $7.21bn for the year ended 31 January 2026, up 18%. Competes in mechanical and AEC design rather than EDA
Siemens EDA (part of Siemens AG)	Not separately listed	Siemens does not disclose standalone Siemens EDA revenue; it sits inside Digital Industries Software. TrendForce estimated a 13% EDA share in 2024
Ansys	No longer independent	Acquired by Synopsys, deal completed 17 July 2025 for approximately $34.9bn. Delisted and now operated as a Synopsys business

9. Insider Activity

Chief Executive Anirudh Devgan has been the largest single seller. Aggregated Form 4 data shows Cadence insiders transacted on the open market 71 times in the six months to August 2026, with zero purchases and 71 sales. Insiders collectively hold about 0.35% of shares outstanding. The table below lists the transactions that could be traced to individual filings.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Anirudh Devgan (President and CEO)	01 Jun 2026	Sale	76,827	Approximately $401	$30.85m	Plan status not confirmed on the filing
Anirudh Devgan (President and CEO)	22 May 2026	Sale	51,887	Approximately $370	$19.20m	Plan status not confirmed on the filing
John M. Wall (SVP and CFO)	05 May 2026	Sale	5,000	$348.71	$1.74m	Rule 10b5-1 plan
Paul Cunningham (Senior Vice President)	17 Aug 2026	Option exercise and sale	2,000	$323.32 (exercise at $138.02)	$0.65m	Option exercise and disposal
Paul Cunningham (Senior Vice President)	15 Jul 2026	Option exercise and sale	2,000	$383.36 (exercise at $138.02)	$0.77m	Option exercise and disposal
Chin-Chi Teng (Senior Vice President)	22 Jun 2026	Option exercise and sale	1,000 exercised, sold in tranches	$379.18 to $388.88 (exercise at $202.94)	Approximately $0.38m	Option exercise and disposal
Ita M. Brennan (Director)	17 Mar 2026	Sale	Small tranches of 3 to 73 shares	$293.53 to $300.29	Not material	Plan status not confirmed on the filing

The pattern is worth reading carefully rather than dramatically. Devgan's sales came at $370 and $401, close to the June high, and the two Cunningham transactions are option exercises at a $138.02 strike granted years earlier. Only the Wall disposal is explicitly footnoted as a Rule 10b5-1 plan sale in the filings reviewed.

10. Key Risks

• Export controls and federal probation: on 28 July 2025 Cadence agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit export-control violations over sales to China's National University of Defense Technology between 2015 and 2021, with total penalties of approximately $140.6m across the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Industry and Security. The plea carries a five-year probation period running to roughly mid-2030, with mandatory compliance programme obligations and annual reporting to the DOJ. The FY2025 Form 10-K warns the settlement could trigger further inquiries by other authorities, including in China.
• China revenue concentration and policy volatility: China was 13% of fiscal 2025 revenue, approximately $689m, rising to 15% in Q2 2026. BIS imposed licence requirements on EDA sales to China on 23 May 2025 and rescinded them on 2 to 3 July 2025. Cadence's China revenue swung from 11% to 9% to 18% to 12% across the four quarters of 2025 as a direct result.
• AI disintermediation of the tool layer: the July 2026 Moonshot AI disclosure that its Kimi K3 model completed an autonomous chip design flow in 48 hours using only open-source EDA tools removed 9.6% of the market capitalisation in a session. Cadence's answer is to be the agent vendor itself, but the AI Super Agents portfolio is new, unproven at scale and not yet separately quantified in the accounts.
• Integration and balance-sheet risk from the Hexagon acquisition: $2.10bn of cash left the business in the first half of 2026. Goodwill and acquired intangibles of $6.79bn at 30 June 2026 sit against $6.86bn of total equity, and acquisition-related amortisation has risen from 2% to 5% of revenue. A write-down of any part of that carrying value would be large relative to earnings.
• Valuation compression risk: the shares have already de-rated roughly 23% from the $416.69 high of 2 June 2026 without any deterioration in reported numbers. At 39x forward non-GAAP earnings, further multiple contraction does not require an earnings miss.
• Customer concentration in a small buyer universe: Cadence sells to a limited number of large semiconductor companies, hyperscalers and system builders. Q2 2026 IP growth of more than 40% leaned heavily on a single multi-year Intel agreement, and seven of the top ten customers bought both hardware platforms in fiscal 2025. Cadence does not disclose a named customer above 10% of revenue.
• Competitive escalation from Synopsys: Synopsys guides to approximately $9.61bn of FY2026 revenue against Cadence's $6.30bn, and its Ansys acquisition directly targets the multiphysics and system analysis ground Cadence bought Hexagon and BETA CAE to occupy.

11. Recent Developments

• 17 Feb 2026 — Cadence reports fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results. Revenue of $5.297bn, up 14.1%, non-GAAP EPS of $7.14 and record backlog of $7.8bn. Initial FY2026 guidance of $5.90bn to $6.00bn revenue explicitly excluded the then-pending Hexagon transaction.
• 23 Feb 2026 — Cadence completes the acquisition of Hexagon's Design and Engineering business. The largest deal in the company's history at approximately €2.7bn, structured roughly 70% cash and 30% Cadence stock, expected to add about $160m of revenue in 2026 and pushing goodwill from $2.75bn to $4.91bn by 30 June.
• 15 Apr 2026 — Expanded NVIDIA partnership and a Google Cloud tie-up announced at CadenceLIVE. Cadence solvers accelerated on NVIDIA CUDA-X, AI-physics and Omniverse, the Millennium M2000 supercomputer introduced, and Google's Gemini models integrated into ChipStack and distributed via Google Cloud Marketplace.
• 27 Apr 2026 — First quarter 2026 results and the first guidance raise of the year. Revenue of $1.474bn, up 18.7%, non-GAAP EPS of $1.96 and backlog of $8.0bn. Full-year revenue guidance lifted to $6.125bn to $6.225bn.
• 07 May 2026 — 2026 annual meeting of stockholders held. Eleven directors elected, an amendment to the Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan approved adding five million authorised shares, say-on-pay carried and PricewaterhouseCoopers ratified as auditor for the year ending 31 December 2026.
• 02 Jun 2026 — Shares reach a 52-week high of $416.69. The stock has since fallen roughly 23% to $319.02 as of 21 August 2026 without any downgrade to company guidance.
• 15 Jul 2026 — AuraStack AI Super Agent launched. Presented as the first agentic AI platform for PCB and advanced packaging, extending the AI Super Agents portfolio across the full electronic system design flow. Separately in July, Cadence certified AI reference flows for Intel 18A-P and Intel 14A.
• 27 Jul 2026 — Second quarter 2026 results and a second guidance raise. Record revenue of $1.584bn, up 24.2%, record backlog of $8.1bn, current RPO of $4.2bn and non-GAAP EPS of $2.11. Full-year revenue guidance raised to $6.26bn to $6.34bn with non-GAAP EPS of $8.05 to $8.15 and operating cash flow of approximately $2bn.

Discuss this and other semiconductor names with other readers on the ChartsView Forum.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 16 Sep 2026 — the archived webcast of the Q2 2026 earnings call expires, which historically marks the start of Cadence's pre-results quiet period
• Expected late October 2026 — third quarter 2026 results. No date has been confirmed as of 23 August 2026; Cadence reported Q3 2025 on 27 October 2025, Q1 2026 on 27 April 2026 and Q2 2026 on 27 July 2026
• Expected February 2027 — fourth quarter and full-year 2026 results, with initial FY2027 guidance. FY2025 results were released on 17 February 2026
• Expected April 2027 — CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley 2027, the company's main product announcement venue. The 2026 edition ran 15 to 16 April 2026
• Expected May 2027 — 2027 annual meeting of stockholders. Directors elected on 7 May 2026 serve until that meeting
• Expected mid-2030 — expiry of the five-year probation period imposed under the July 2025 export-control plea agreement, during which annual compliance reports are due to the Department of Justice

Cadence pays no dividend, so there are no ex-dividend or payment dates to track. No investor day has been announced for 2026.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 23 August 2026

CDW Corporation sits between technology vendors and roughly 250,000 customer organisations, selling hardware, software, cloud and services from more than 1,000 brands and wrapping them in configuration, integration and lifecycle support. Fiscal 2025 net sales were $22.42bn and the second quarter of 2026 delivered records on net sales, gross profit and non-GAAP earnings per share. Yet the shares have fallen 17.8% over twelve months and dropped hard after both of the last two results. The reason is not growth, it is mix: gross margin is compressing as low-margin hardware for AI-readiness projects displaces the netted-down software revenue that inflated the ratio between 2021 and 2024. This report sets out what the filings say, without opinions or price targets. Live price action is on our Live Charts page.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	CDW, Nasdaq Global Select Market
Sector / industry	Information Technology — IT solutions provider and value-added reseller
Headquarters	200 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Vernon Hills, Illinois, United States. Incorporated in Delaware
Founded	1984, by Michael Krasny as MPK Computing
CEO / Leadership	Christine A. Leahy, Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO since January 2019, Chair since January 2023). Albert J. Miralles, Chief Financial Officer, who announced on 5 August 2026 that he plans to retire in 2027
Employees	Approximately 14,800 coworkers at 31 December 2025, of whom about 10,500 are customer-facing. Approximately 14,700 at 30 June 2026
Revenue (FY2025 net sales)	$22,424.1m, up 6.8% year on year
Gross profit (FY2025)	$4,873.4m, a 21.7% gross margin
Net income (FY2025)	$1,066.6m GAAP; GAAP diluted EPS $8.08, non-GAAP diluted EPS $10.02
Trailing twelve month net sales	$23,500.4m to 30 June 2026
Share price	$137.25 at the close on 21 August 2026
Market cap	Approximately $17.16bn (21 August 2026)
Dividend	$0.630 per quarter, $2.52 annualised, a 1.84% yield. Twelve consecutive years of increases
Fiscal year end	31 December

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Record operating performance at a modest multiple: second quarter 2026 net sales of $6.57bn and non-GAAP EPS of $2.91 were both all-time records and both ahead of consensus. At $137.25 the shares trade on roughly 16.5x trailing GAAP earnings, 13.1x trailing non-GAAP earnings and about 12.6x the implied FY2026 non-GAAP guidance, against 0.73x sales.
• Guidance has been raised twice this year: the full-year 2026 gross profit outlook moved from low-to-mid single-digit growth on 6 May 2026 to mid single-digit growth on 5 August 2026, with non-GAAP EPS growth taken to the high end of a high single-digit range. Management continues to target growth of 200 to 300 basis points above the US IT market.
• The insiders bought the dip: Chief Executive Christine Leahy purchased 4,830 shares on the open market at $103.395 on 18 May 2026, and director David Nelms bought 18,000 shares at $111.43 on 27 May 2026, roughly $2.5m combined, days after the post-first-quarter collapse. The board authorised an additional $1.0bn of buyback capacity on 13 May 2026.
• Scale and breadth are genuinely hard to replicate: more than 1,000 vendor partners, over 100,000 products and services, more than 250,000 customers, five US channels each above $1.7bn of net sales, and roughly 10,500 customer-facing coworkers. More than half of US net sales come from account managers with seven or more years of tenure at CDW.

Bear Case

• Gross margin is compressing and management says it will keep compressing: gross margin fell 60 basis points in the first quarter of 2026 and 70 basis points to 20.1% in the second. Guidance is for second-half 2026 gross margin below the second half of 2025 and full-year margin modestly below 2025's 21.7%. Both 2026 results reactions were negative despite revenue and earnings beats.
• The margin expansion of 2021 to 2024 was accounting mix, not pricing power: gross margin rose from 17.1% to 21.9% almost entirely because netted-down agent-basis software and cloud revenue grew as a share of the mix. Agent revenue was $1,723.2m or 7.7% of fiscal 2025 net sales but a far larger share of gross profit. When hardware volume returns, the ratio mechanically falls.
• Cash conversion has deteriorated sharply: adjusted free cash flow was $278.4m in the first half of 2026 against $458.9m a year earlier, and the second quarter alone produced negative free cash flow of $82.6m on a roughly $400m inventory build. The cash conversion cycle widened to 21 days at 30 June 2026 from 16 days at year-end. Management conceded conversion ran below its 80% to 90% rule of thumb.
• Leverage and a thin equity base: total debt was $5,817.0m at 30 June 2026 against $361.8m of cash and $2,442.1m of stockholders' equity, with net leverage at 2.5x inside a 2.0x to 3.0x target. Goodwill of $4,652.1m and other intangibles of $1,095.7m mean tangible book value is negative, so the balance sheet provides no valuation floor.
• Structural channel risk from hyperscaler marketplaces: the FY2025 Form 10-K explicitly warns that AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft marketplaces plus evolving partner authorisation and incentive models "could change the role of traditional resellers, which may limit access to offerings, pressure margins, and restrict participation in certain channels", alongside OEMs selling direct.

3. Revenue Segments

The table below shows fiscal 2025 as reported. Note that CDW realigned its segments effective 1 January 2026, replacing Corporate, Small Business and Public with Commercial, Government and Education, with CDW UK and CDW Canada remaining in Other. Recast reporting began with the quarter ended 31 March 2026.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Corporate	42.1% ($9,442.4m, up 6.8%)	Medium and large US commercial customers. Gross profit $2,201.9m at a 23.3% segment gross margin, the highest of any channel
Education	13.9% ($3,109.6m, down 1.8%)	K-12 and higher education institutions. The weakest channel in FY2025 and up only 0.7% in Q2 2026, with higher education operating under constrained funding
Healthcare	12.6% ($2,836.1m, up 13.3%)	Hospital systems, providers and payers. The fastest-growing US public channel in FY2025
Other (CDW UK and CDW Canada)	12.1% ($2,719.8m, up 9.7%)	International operations. Grew 22.9% year on year in Q2 2026, a record quarter in Canada
Government	11.5% ($2,589.5m, up 4.1%)	US federal, state and local agencies. Grew 13.6% year on year in Q2 2026
Small Business	7.7% ($1,726.7m, up 13.3%)	Small US commercial customers. Folded into the Commercial channels under the 2026 realignment

By product mix in fiscal 2025: total hardware $16,070.6m or 71.6% of net sales, software $4,203.0m or 18.7%, services $2,035.7m or 9.1%, and other items such as delivery charges $114.8m or 0.6%. Within hardware, notebooks and mobile devices were $5,638.0m or 25.1% of net sales, the single largest category. Geographically, the United States accounted for $19,621.2m or 87.5% of net sales.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. CDW buys from original equipment manufacturers, software publishers, cloud providers and two large wholesale distributors, then resells with selection, configuration, financing, integration and lifecycle services attached. It takes principal treatment on hardware, recognising the gross amount as net sales, and agent treatment on a large slice of software and cloud, recognising only the net commission. In fiscal 2025, principal point-in-time revenue was $19,096.6m, agent point-in-time revenue was $1,723.2m and principal over-time revenue was $1,604.3m. Roughly 51% of North American net sales were drop-shipped directly by suppliers rather than passing through CDW's warehouses.

Why gross margin, not revenue, is the number that matters. Gross profit as a percentage of net sales moved 17.14% in FY2021, 19.73% in FY2022, 21.76% in FY2023, 21.92% in FY2024 and 21.73% in FY2025, before falling to 20.1% in the second quarter of 2026. Almost all of that 460 basis point expansion was mix into netted-down software and cloud, where a small reported revenue figure carries near-total gross margin. This is precisely why management guides to gross profit growth rather than net sales growth: the two can move in opposite directions.

Where the durability comes from. CDW holds the highest-level certifications from Broadcom, Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, NetApp, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks and Samsung. It runs two North American distribution centres and one in the UK totalling more than one million square feet, shipping roughly 22 million units a year. The moat is relationship density and breadth of authorisation rather than proprietary technology, which is exactly why the hyperscaler marketplace risk in the risk factors is worth taking seriously.

Capital returns. CDW has returned approximately $8.4bn to shareholders since its June 2013 relisting. The quarterly dividend has been raised for twelve consecutive years, most recently by 1% in November 2025, and targets roughly 25% of non-GAAP net income. Buybacks were $344m in the second quarter of 2026, leaving over $1.1bn of authorised capacity at 30 June 2026.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from CDW's Form 10-K filings, quarterly earnings press releases and SEC XBRL company facts. Dividend per share figures are on a cash-paid basis.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	20,820.8	+12.7%	$7.04	$7.97	$1.700	$6,755.8m
FY2022	23,748.7	+14.1%	$8.13	$9.79	$2.090	$5,866.4m
FY2023	21,376.0	-10.0%	$8.10	$9.88	$2.390	$5,031.8m
FY2024	20,998.7	-1.8%	$7.97	$9.52	$2.485	$5,607.0m
FY2025	22,424.1	+6.8%	$8.08	$10.02	$2.505	$4,622.3m

Long-term debt above is the non-current balance. Current maturities were $102.7m at the end of FY2021, $56.3m at FY2022, $613.1m at FY2023, $235.8m at FY2024 and $1,007.5m at FY2025. Gross profit over the same five years was $3,568.5m, $4,686.6m, $4,652.4m, $4,602.4m and $4,873.4m. Adjusted EPS is CDW's own non-GAAP diluted EPS.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026 (ended 30 Jun 2026)	6,572.2	$2.91	$2.15
Q1 2026	5,679.8	$2.28	$1.82
Q4 2025	5,511.0	$2.57	$2.14
Q3 2025	5,737.4	$2.71	$2.21
Q2 2025	5,976.6	$2.60	$2.05
Q1 2025	5,199.1	$2.15	$1.69
FY2025 total	22,424.1	$10.02	$8.08

The second quarter of 2026 carried 64 selling days. Gross profit was $1,319.8m, up 6.3%, GAAP operating income was $428.6m, up 2.0%, and non-GAAP operating income was $556.0m, up 7.0%, at an 8.5% margin.

Cash flow and balance sheet, fiscal 2025. Net cash from operating activities was $1,205.2m against capital expenditure of $117.1m, giving free cash flow of $1,088.1m and adjusted free cash flow of $1,085.5m. Total depreciation and amortisation in the cash flow statement was $295.6m, of which amortisation of acquisition-related intangibles, the figure added back in the non-GAAP reconciliation, was $169.8m. GAAP operating income was $1,655.6m, a 7.4% margin, against non-GAAP operating income of $1,996.7m at 8.9%. Cash and equivalents were $618.7m with no short-term investments, against $1,007.5m of current maturities and $4,622.3m of non-current long-term debt, giving company-defined total debt including finance leases of $5,629.8m.

Position at 30 June 2026. Cash of $361.8m, total debt of $5,817.0m, net debt of $5,455.2m, net leverage of 2.5x, stockholders' equity of $2,442.1m and goodwill of $4,652.1m. Accounts receivable had risen to $7,343.7m and inventory to $981.8m. Shares outstanding were 125,017,426 as at 31 July 2026, down from 128,993,588 in February.

Guidance. On 5 August 2026 management raised the full-year 2026 outlook for the second time. Customer spend is guided to US IT addressable market growth plus a premium of roughly 200 to 300 basis points on a constant-currency basis, with the US IT market itself lifted to mid single-digit growth. Gross profit is guided to mid single-digit growth, gross margin modestly below fiscal 2025, and non-GAAP diluted EPS growth at the high end of a high single-digit range. Modelling guidance for the year includes depreciation and amortisation of approximately $300m, interest expense of $235m to $240m, a non-GAAP tax rate of 25.5% to 26.5%, capital expenditure of $110m to $120m and adjusted free cash flow at 80% to 90% of non-GAAP net income.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately $17.16bn (125.02m shares outstanding at 31 July 2026, at the $137.25 close on 21 August 2026)
Enterprise value	Approximately $22.61bn (market cap $17.16bn plus total debt $5.82bn less cash $0.36bn, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Including operating lease liabilities the figure rises to roughly $23.2bn
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	16.5x on trailing twelve month GAAP diluted EPS of $8.32 (FY2025 $8.08 less first-half 2025 $3.73 plus first-half 2026 $3.97). On the equivalent trailing non-GAAP EPS of $10.46 the multiple is approximately 13.1x
P/E (forward)	Approximately 12.6x. FY2026 non-GAAP EPS implied by guidance of high-end high single-digit growth on FY2025's $10.02 is roughly $10.85 to $10.95
P/S (TTM)	0.73x (market cap $17.16bn over trailing twelve month net sales of $23,500.4m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 11.4x (EV $22.61bn over EBITDA of $1,976.2m; EBITDA = trailing twelve month GAAP operating income of $1,678.6m plus trailing depreciation and amortisation of $297.6m, using the wider cash-flow-statement figure rather than the $169.8m acquisition-intangible add-back)
P/FCF	Approximately 19.9x (market cap $17.16bn over free cash flow of $860.2m; FCF = trailing twelve month operating cash flow $981.8m less capital expenditure $121.6m). Note this is depressed by the first-half 2026 working capital build; on fiscal 2025 free cash flow of $1,088.1m the multiple would be 15.8x
Price/book	Approximately 7.0x on stockholders' equity of $2,442.1m at 30 June 2026. Tangible book value is negative given $4,652.1m of goodwill and $1,095.7m of other intangibles
52-week high	$171.55, reached 11 September 2025
52-week low	$97.12, reached 12 May 2026
Short interest (% of float)	6.58% of a 124.5m share float, on 8.20m shares short at the 31 July 2026 settlement date, down from 9.78m a month earlier. Yahoo Finance quotes 7.60% on a narrower float base
Days to cover	4.52 days at the 31 July 2026 settlement
Dividend yield	1.84% on an annualised rate of $2.52 per share, a payout of roughly 30% of GAAP earnings and 24% of non-GAAP earnings

For scheduled macro releases that shape enterprise IT budgets, see our Economic Calendar.

7. What Are They Building

AI services rather than AI products. CDW does not report a research and development line; it invests through services capability, platforms and acquisitions. The AI 360 Framework is its proprietary service model spanning AI strategy, governance, infrastructure, security, data and application development. On the 5 August 2026 earnings call management described a multi-year, multi-million dollar engagement with a western US state technology office built on the framework, now being productised for state and local government nationally to generate recurring services revenue.

Security and automation. CDW highlighted an AI-driven automated vulnerability identification and remediation programme, delivered as a multi-million dollar engagement with a large financial services customer, on the same call. Security top line and gross profit both grew double digits in the second quarter of 2026.

Internal AI tooling. CDW Assist Super Agent is an internal sales tool covering account planning, opportunity identification, customer engagement and workflow automation, discussed on the Q2 2026 call. Separately, the Geared for Growth operational efficiency programme targets annual run-rate savings of $100m to $200m by 2027 to 2028, with benefits beginning to accrue in the second half of 2026.

Cloud practice. Mission Cloud Services, acquired on 27 November 2024 for a base price of $330m, is now CDW's dedicated AWS practice alongside CDW Digital Velocity, which covers cloud, data, AI and software platform engineering. CDW holds AWS Premier Tier Partner status with 17 AWS competencies. No acquisitions have been announced in 2025 or 2026 to date; fiscal 2025 acquisition spend was just $21.5m against $323.9m in 2024.

Organisational build. Hang Tan joined on 27 April 2026 as Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, coming from HPE where he was Chief Operating Officer of Hybrid Cloud and previously Chief Strategy Officer. He owns enterprise strategy, the transformation office and corporate development.

8. Competitive Landscape

CDW does not publish a market share figure and no reliable current US value-added reseller share estimate is available. The usable comparison is scale: CDW's US net sales of $19.62bn in fiscal 2025 dwarf Insight's total $8.25bn and Connection's $2.87bn, with privately held SHI International reporting more than $16bn of rolling twelve-month gross sales as at 14 October 2025.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
TD SYNNEX (SNX)	$20.00bn at the $250.14 close, 21 August 2026	FY2025 revenue $62.51bn for the year ended 30 November 2025. A distributor rather than a reseller, and one of CDW's two largest suppliers
Arrow Electronics (ARW)	$10.73bn at the $210.85 close, 21 August 2026	FY2025 revenue $30.85bn. Component and enterprise computing distribution
Insight Enterprises (NSIT)	$4.33bn at the $147.39 close, 21 August 2026	FY2025 net sales $8.25bn, down 5.2% on $8.70bn in FY2024. The closest listed comparable to CDW
Connection (CNXN)	$1.97bn at the $77.93 close, 21 August 2026	FY2025 net sales $2.87bn, up 2.5% on $2.80bn
Accenture (ACN)	$113.38bn as at August 2026	FY2025 revenue $69.67bn for the year ended 31 August 2025. Competes on the services and integration side rather than product resale
SHI International	Private, no market capitalisation	More than $16bn of rolling twelve-month gross sales reported on 14 October 2025, with over 7,000 staff and more than 15,000 customer organisations

9. Insider Activity

Chief Executive Christine A. Leahy remains the central figure here, and unusually for a large-cap technology name the recent signal from CDW insiders has been buying rather than selling. Leahy purchased shares on the open market on 18 May 2026, six days after the stock hit its 52-week low, and director David W. Nelms followed nine days later with a larger purchase. The only meaningful disposal in the period followed an option exercise.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Mukesh Kumar (Chief Services and Solutions Officer)	17 Aug 2026	Shares withheld for tax	1,147	$139.42	$0.16m	RSU settlement withholding, code F
Elizabeth H. Connelly (Chief Commercial Officer)	07 Aug 2026	Sale after option exercise	26,695	$137.62 weighted average	$3.67m	Open market, no 10b5-1 plan indicated
David W. Nelms (Director)	27 May 2026	Purchase	18,000	$111.43	$2.01m	Open market purchase
Christine A. Leahy (Chair, President and CEO)	18 May 2026	Purchase	4,830	$103.395	$0.50m	Open market purchase
Hang Tan (Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer)	11 May 2026	Grant	33,802	Nil	Not applicable	New-hire equity award, code A
Katherine E. Sanderson (Officer)	16 Mar 2026	Shares withheld for tax	2,205	$116.16	$0.26m	RSU settlement withholding, code F
Christine A. Leahy (Chair, President and CEO)	12 Mar 2026	Shares withheld for tax	4,873	$118.91	$0.58m	RSU settlement withholding, code F

Connelly's August disposal followed exercises of 11,795 options at $95.57 and 14,900 at $98.21, and reduced her holding by 44% to 34,215 shares. None of the transactions above is filed under a disclosed Rule 10b5-1 plan.

10. Key Risks

• Gross margin compression is confirmed, not speculative: margin fell 60 basis points in Q1 2026 and 70 basis points to 20.1% in Q2 2026, and management guides to further compression in the second half. The mechanism is large, low-margin hardware deals for enterprise AI-readiness projects diluting a ratio that had been inflated by netted-down software. Both 2026 earnings reactions were sharply negative despite revenue and earnings beats.
• Cyclical IT spending and demand pull-forward: fiscal 2023 net sales fell 10.0% and fiscal 2024 fell 1.8%. Management repeatedly describes customer behaviour as cautious and deliberate, and flags the possibility that customers who acted with urgency on hardware procurement have pulled demand forward from later periods.
• Tariffs and component cost inflation: the FY2025 Form 10-K names additional duties, tariffs and retaliatory tariffs as a risk factor, with Asian manufacturing concentration highlighted. Memory price inflation was called out on the Q2 2026 call as raising device average selling prices and pushing some customers toward cloud rather than hardware. CDW's cost-plus pricing passes tariff cost through, which mechanically dilutes the gross margin percentage.
• Government and education budget exposure: Government was 11.5% and Education 13.9% of fiscal 2025 net sales, a combined 25.4%, rising to 38.1% if Healthcare is included in the old Public segment definition. Education fell 1.8% in FY2025 and grew only 0.7% in Q2 2026. The risk factors specifically name adverse changes in government spending and funding policies, federal procurement policies and US government shutdowns.
• Vendor and distributor concentration: in 2025 CDW generated over $2.0bn of net sales from each of its three largest vendor partners. The 10-K states that a significant portion of sales derives from products made by Apple, Cisco, Dell Technologies, HP Inc., Lenovo and Microsoft, and that purchases from two wholesale distributors, Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX, represent over 25% of total purchases. Individual vendor percentages are not disclosed. A change in terms or incentive structure at any one of these would hit supply, cost and vendor incentive income directly.
• Channel disintermediation by hyperscalers and direct OEM sales: the risk factors call out AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft marketplaces plus evolving partner authorisation and incentive models as a threat to the role of the traditional reseller, alongside OEMs selling direct and expanding services through acquisition.
• Leadership transition risk at a difficult moment: the Chief Financial Officer announced his intention to retire in 2027, the Chief Growth and Innovation Officer retired at the end of 2025, and a new Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer only started in April 2026. Three C-suite changes inside twelve months, coinciding with a margin transition, is a genuine execution risk.

11. Recent Developments

• 04 Feb 2026 — CDW reports fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results and the shares rise 9.4%. Fourth quarter net sales of $5,511.0m, up 6.3%, gross margin of 22.8% and non-GAAP EPS of $2.57. Full-year net sales of $22,424.1m and non-GAAP EPS of $10.02, up 5.2%. A $0.630 quarterly dividend was declared the same day.
• 20 Feb 2026 — FY2025 Form 10-K filed, confirming the segment realignment effective 1 January 2026. Corporate, Small Business and Public become Commercial, Government and Education, with recast history from the first quarter of 2026. The filing also discloses more than $2.0bn of net sales from each of the three largest vendor partners.
• 23 Apr 2026 — CDW names Hang Tan Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, effective 27 April 2026, reporting to Christine Leahy and owning enterprise strategy, the transformation office and corporate development.
• 06 May 2026 — First quarter 2026 results and a 20.3% share price collapse. Net sales of $5,679.8m, up 9.2%, and non-GAAP EPS of $2.28, up 6.3%, but non-GAAP operating income missed expectations and gross margin fell about 60 basis points on a lower mix of netted-down revenue. The full-year gross profit outlook was nevertheless raised.
• 12 May 2026 — the shares reach a 52-week low of $97.12, six days after the first quarter report, having traded at $136.80 immediately before it.
• 13 May 2026 — the board authorises a $1.0bn increase to the share repurchase programme, on top of roughly $484m remaining at 31 March 2026. CDW has returned approximately $8.4bn to shareholders since the June 2013 relisting.
• 27 May 2026 — director David Nelms buys 18,000 shares at $111.43, following Chief Executive Christine Leahy's own open-market purchase of 4,830 shares at $103.395 on 18 May 2026. The two purchases total roughly $2.5m.
• 05 Aug 2026 — Second quarter 2026 results, a guidance raise and the CFO retirement announcement, with the shares falling 9.0%. Record net sales of $6,572.2m, up 10.0%, and record non-GAAP EPS of $2.91, up 11.9%, both ahead of consensus. Gross margin fell 70 basis points to 20.1%, free cash flow was negative $82.6m on a roughly $400m inventory build, and CFO Albert Miralles announced he plans to retire in 2027. Full-year gross profit guidance was raised to mid single-digit growth.

Discuss this and other IT channel names with other readers on the ChartsView Forum.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 25 Aug 2026 — record date and ex-dividend date for the $0.630 quarterly dividend declared on 5 August 2026
• 10 Sep 2026 — payment date for that $0.630 quarterly dividend
• Expected October 2026 — announcement of the confirmed third quarter 2026 reporting date. CDW issued the equivalent notice on 21 October in 2025
• Expected early November 2026 — third quarter 2026 results, released before market open with a call at 08:30 Eastern, together with the fourth quarter dividend declaration and the company's annual dividend review. Q3 2025 was reported on 4 November 2025, and the last dividend increase was announced on 4 November 2025
• Expected February 2027 — fourth quarter and full-year 2026 results with the initial FY2027 outlook. FY2025 results were released on 4 February 2026
• Expected during 2027 — completion of the Chief Financial Officer succession and the retirement of Albert Miralles, who remains in post until a successor is appointed and will then move to an advisory role
• Expected May 2027 — 2027 annual meeting of stockholders. The 2026 meeting was held on 21 May 2026

No investor day has been announced for 2026. CDW presented at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference in February 2026 and the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications conference in May 2026.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 11 September 2026

ASML Holding NV is the only company in the world that builds extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, the tools required to pattern the most advanced logic and memory chips. That position makes the Veldhoven-based group a single point of dependency for every leading-edge fab on the planet. FY2025 net sales reached €32.7bn with net income of €9.6bn, and management has twice raised its FY2026 guidance during the year — most recently on 15 July 2026 to €43–45bn of net sales — on the back of AI-driven capacity investment by logic and memory customers. This report sets out what ASML sells, what the filings actually say, how the shares are currently priced, and where the risks sit. No analyst ratings and no price targets are used anywhere in this document. You can follow the price action on our Live Charts page.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Listing	NASDAQ: ASML (New York Registry Shares, 1:1) and Euronext Amsterdam: ASML
Sector	Semiconductor capital equipment — lithography systems
Headquarters	Veldhoven, the Netherlands
Employees	More than 44,500 FTE (stated in the Q2 2026 results release, 15 July 2026)
CEO / Leadership	Christophe Fouquet, President and CEO (in post since April 2024, confirmed as signatory of the Q2 2026 results on 15 July 2026); Roger Dassen, EVP and CFO; Marco Pieters, EVP and CTO since October 2025
Revenue (FY2025)	€32,667.3m net sales (FY2025 Form 20-F, XBRL tag RevenueFromContractWithCustomerExcludingAssessedTax)
Net income (FY2025)	€9,609.4m (FY2025 Form 20-F)
Gross margin (FY2025)	52.8% (gross profit €17,258.0m on net sales €32,667.3m)
Market cap	Approximately US$661bn / €567bn (September 2026), based on 385.42m shares outstanding at 31 December 2025 and a share price of about US$1,714.88
Share price	About US$1,714.88 on Nasdaq (4 September 2026); about €1,472 on Euronext Amsterdam
Index membership	AEX (Amsterdam); EURO STOXX 50, where it carried a weight of about 7.98% in August 2026
Reporting	US GAAP, presented in euros; a separate IFRS annual report is also published
Fiscal year end	31 December

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• A genuine monopoly at the leading edge: ASML is the sole commercial supplier of EUV lithography worldwide, and no credible competitor exists — Canon and Nikon between them hold only a residual share of the older DUV market. No chip below roughly 7nm is manufactured in volume without an ASML machine.
• Guidance raised twice in one year: FY2026 net sales guidance moved from €34–39bn in January 2026 to €36–40bn in April 2026 and then to €43–45bn on 15 July 2026, with gross margin guided to 54–56%. Upgrades of that magnitude within six months are unusual for a company of this size.
• Installed base annuity keeps growing: Installed Base Management revenue (service and field upgrades) was €8.2bn in FY2025, up 26% year on year, and €2,762m in Q2 2026 alone. This is recurring, higher-margin revenue that grows mechanically as the global fleet of installed systems expands.
• Pricing power is being exercised: reporting in July 2026 indicated ASML is seeking price increases on both EUV and mature DUV tools, with some Chinese customers accepting roughly 10% higher prices on mature DUV systems. Management describes this as value-based pricing tied to tool productivity gains.
• Capacity is being built for a bigger 2027: ASML said in July 2026 it plans to add about 30% to its 2026 low-NA EUV capacity (around 65 units a year) and about 30% to its DUV immersion capacity (around 130 units a year) for 2027, and is investigating a further 30% for 2028.

Bear Case

• China policy is a recurring, unresolved overhang: China fell from roughly 49% of system sales in 2024 to about 33% in FY2025. Proposed US legislation would extend restrictions to servicing revenue in China, not just new tool sales, and the shares fell on export-control headlines on 7 April 2026.
• Extreme customer concentration: TSMC alone accounted for roughly 24% of FY2025 net sales, and TSMC plus Samsung for about 38%. A capex pause at one or two customers moves ASML's revenue line directly.
• Bookings are violently lumpy: net bookings were €5,399m in Q3 2025, €13,158m in Q4 2025 and about €5.5bn in Q2 2026. A single soft quarter of orders can reset market expectations even when revenue is unaffected.
• The valuation leaves no room for disappointment: the shares trade at roughly 53 times trailing GAAP earnings and roughly 51 times FY2025 free cash flow, having ranged between US$791.02 and US$1,999.96 over the past 52 weeks. That is a wide band for a mega-cap.
• High-NA is still pre-production: ASML only targets production-grade availability of High-NA EUV by the end of 2026, and imec is aiming at a Q4 2026 qualification. Slower customer qualification would push out the payback on ASML's own capacity spending.

3. Business Segments

ASML reports one operating segment but discloses net sales by product line. The split below is for FY2025, from ASML's 2025 Annual Report financials.

Segment / category	% of revenue	What it is
DUV systems	37% (€12.0bn)	Deep ultraviolet immersion and dry scanners (ArFi, ArF dry, KrF, i-line) used for mature and mid-range nodes as well as many non-critical layers at the leading edge. Down 6% year on year in FY2025.
EUV systems	35% (€11.6bn)	Extreme ultraviolet scanners (NXE and EXE families) required for the most critical layers at advanced logic and DRAM nodes. Up 39% year on year, with revenue recognised on 48 EUV systems in FY2025.
Installed Base Management	25% (€8.2bn)	Service contracts, spare parts and field upgrades on the global installed fleet. Up 26% year on year and the most stable revenue line in the business.
Metrology and Inspection	3% (€0.83bn)	YieldStar optical metrology and e-beam inspection systems used to measure and control patterning accuracy. Up 28% year on year.

By end market, FY2025 net system sales split roughly 66% logic (€16.1bn) and 34% memory (€8.4bn). By geography, FY2025 system sales were approximately 33% China, 25% South Korea and 22% Taiwan, with the balance across the United States, Japan and EMEA. In Q4 2025 specifically the split was China 36%, South Korea 22%, United States 17%, Taiwan 13% and other 12%.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. ASML sells lithography systems at prices running from tens of millions of euros for mature DUV tools to more than €350m for the newest High-NA EUV machines, then earns a long tail of service and upgrade revenue over each system's twenty-year-plus operating life. Systems revenue is cyclical and order-driven; Installed Base Management revenue is annuity-like and grew to €8.2bn in FY2025.

Why the moat is unusually deep. EUV lithography took roughly two decades and tens of billions of euros of combined ASML, customer and supplier investment to commercialise. The light source, the optics (supplied by Zeiss under an exclusive arrangement), the vacuum systems and the control software are each near-unrepeatable engineering assets. No competitor has shipped a commercial EUV tool. In DUV, ASML holds the large majority of the market with Canon and Nikon splitting the remainder.

Where the margin comes from. Gross margin was 52.8% in FY2025 and reached 54.0% in Q2 2026, above ASML's own guidance, driven primarily by higher-than-expected Installed Base Management sales. Mix between EUV, DUV and service is the dominant swing factor, with field upgrades on NXE:3800E systems shifting revenue into the higher-margin installed-base line.

What it costs to stay ahead. R&D expense was €4,698.8m in FY2025, up 9.2% on FY2024's €4,303.7m, directed at NXE:3800E/F systems, EXE High-NA platforms, e-beam and optical metrology, multibeam inspection and holistic software. SG&A was €1,257.8m. Operating income was €11,301.4m.

The structural vulnerability. The same concentration that gives ASML pricing power also exposes it to policy. Export controls are set by governments in The Hague and Washington rather than negotiated with customers, and they have already halved China's share of system sales in two years.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from ASML's Form 20-F filings and quarterly results releases. Annual balance-sheet and cash-flow figures were re-derived directly from ASML's SEC XBRL company facts (CIK 0000937966) rather than from third-party aggregators.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (€m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	18,611.0	+33.1%	€14.34	€14.34†	€5.50	€4,075.0m
FY2022	21,173.4	+13.8%	€14.13	€14.13†	€5.80	€3,514.2m
FY2023	27,558.5	+30.2%	€19.89	€19.89†	€6.10	€4,631.5m
FY2024	28,262.9	+2.6%	€19.24	€19.24†	€6.40	€3,677.3m
FY2025	32,667.3	+15.6%	€24.71	€24.71†	€7.50	€2,709.0m

† ASML does not publish an adjusted or non-GAAP earnings per share figure. The GAAP diluted EPS is repeated in that column so the table remains complete. Long-term debt is the non-current borrowings line from the balance sheet; the current portion was €990.2m at 31 December 2025 and €1,010.3m at 31 December 2024.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026	€9,326m	€7.59†	€7.59‡
Q1 2026	€8,767m	€7.15†	€7.15‡
Q4 2025	€9,718m	€7.35†	€7.35‡
Q3 2025	€7,516m	€5.49†	€5.49‡
FY2025 total	€32,667.3m	€24.71†	€24.71

‡ Quarterly figures are basic EPS as published in each quarterly results release; the FY2025 total is diluted EPS per the Form 20-F. Gross margin by quarter was 54.0% in Q2 2026, 53.0% in Q1 2026, 52.2% in Q4 2025 and 51.6% in Q3 2025. Net bookings, ASML's key forward indicator, were about €5.5bn in Q2 2026, €13,158m in Q4 2025 (of which €7.4bn EUV) and €5,399m in Q3 2025 (of which €3.6bn EUV). Backlog stood at €38,797m at the end of FY2025.

The balance sheet is net cash. At 31 December 2025 ASML held €12,916.0m of cash and cash equivalents, with cash plus short-term investments of €13,322m reported in the Q4 2025 release, against total borrowings of €3,699.2m (€2,709.0m non-current plus €990.2m current). Net cash from operating activities was €12,658.5m in FY2025 and capital expenditure on property, plant and equipment was €1,573.6m.

6. Valuation

Raw metrics, September 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Market cap	Approximately €567bn (US$661bn) — 385.42m shares outstanding at 31 December 2025 multiplied by a Euronext price of about €1,472
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	About 53x on trailing-twelve-month basic EPS of €27.58 (Q3 2025 €5.49 + Q4 2025 €7.35 + Q1 2026 €7.15 + Q2 2026 €7.59). On FY2025 reported diluted EPS of €24.71 the multiple is about 60x. ASML publishes no adjusted earnings figure, so there is no second, flattered version of this multiple.
P/E (forward)	n/a — ASML guides to net sales and gross margin only and does not publish an EPS forecast, and this report does not use third-party consensus estimates.
P/S (TTM)	About 16.1x (market cap €567bn / trailing-twelve-month net sales €35,327m, being Q3 2025 €7,516m + Q4 2025 €9,718m + Q1 2026 €8,767m + Q2 2026 €9,326m)
Enterprise value	About €558bn (market cap €567.4bn + total debt €3.70bn − cash and short-term investments €13.32bn, per the FY2025 balance sheet: non-current long-term debt €2,709.0m, current portion €990.2m, cash and equivalents €12,916.0m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	About 45x (EV €558bn / EBITDA €12,340.9m). EBITDA is FY2025 operating income of €11,301.4m plus D&A of €1,039.5m, using the wider total of depreciation €916.0m plus amortisation of intangibles €123.5m rather than the narrower €1,025.9m cash-flow add-back. ASML does not publish quarterly operating income, so a true twelve-month-to-June-2026 figure cannot be built from primary filings; on FY2026 guided revenue the multiple would be materially lower.
P/FCF	About 51x (market cap €567bn / FCF €11,084.9m; FCF = FY2025 net cash from operating activities €12,658.5m − purchases of property, plant and equipment €1,573.6m)
52-week high	US$1,999.96, reached 30 June 2026
52-week low	US$791.02, on 10 September 2025
Dividend	€7.50 per share declared in respect of FY2025. A 2026 interim dividend of €1.88 per share went ex on Euronext on 27 July 2026 and was paid on 5 August 2026.
Buyback	New 2026–2028 programme of up to €12bn announced 28 January 2026; about €1.1bn repurchased in Q2 2026 alone. The prior 2022–2025 programme closed in December 2025 having repurchased €7.6bn of its €12bn authorisation.
Short interest (% of float)	0.55% (2.14m shares short), per Nasdaq settlement data reported via Fintel
Days to cover	1.2

7. What Are They Building

High-NA EUV. The EXE:5000 first-generation High-NA systems went to Intel, TSMC and imec for research from 2023. The EXE:5200, built for high-volume manufacturing, is now with Intel (acceptance testing completed in late 2025), SK hynix (installed at a DRAM fab in September 2025), Samsung (first unit received in late 2025) and imec, which is targeting qualification in Q4 2026 for sub-2nm work. ASML expects High-NA to reach production-grade availability by the end of 2026. Fewer than a dozen units are installed worldwide and each costs in the region of US$400m.

Capacity. Alongside the Q2 2026 results ASML set out plans to add roughly 30% to its 2026 low-NA EUV capacity of about 65 units a year for 2027, and roughly 30% to its DUV immersion capacity of about 130 units a year, with a further 30% on each under investigation for 2028. The upgrade portfolio is also being expanded significantly.

Metrology, inspection and software. R&D of €4.7bn in FY2025 covered the NXE:3800E/F, the EXE High-NA family, the XT:260 packaging tool, e-beam inspection and YieldStar optical metrology, a multibeam inspection roadmap, and holistic software applications using AI.

Artificial intelligence, as a supplier and a user. On 9 September 2025 ASML led a €1.3bn investment in Mistral AI's Series C round, taking a roughly 11% fully diluted stake and becoming Mistral's largest shareholder at a valuation of about €11.7bn, with a seat on Mistral's strategic committee. The stated aim is to embed AI into ASML's own R&D, operations and system software.

8. Peer Comparison

Peer	Market cap (September 2026)	Key 2025/2026 metric
Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT)	Approximately US$394bn as at August 2026 per companiesmarketcap.com, with later coverage implying a higher figure	Shares up about 98% year-to-date in 2026 on AI capex demand, per Yahoo Finance coverage dated 18 August 2026. Broadest front-end equipment portfolio in the industry but no lithography exposure.
KLA Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC)	Approximately US$221bn (September 2026, companiesmarketcap.com)	Shares up about 59% year-to-date in 2026. Dominant in process control and inspection, complementary rather than competitive to ASML.
Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX)	Approximately US$104–108bn (2026 estimate from secondary market data)	FY2025 revenue of about US$17.8bn. Leader in etch and deposition, with heavy memory exposure.
Tokyo Electron (TSE: 8035)	Approximately US$70–76bn (2026 estimate from secondary market data)	Consolidated net sales of about ¥2.45tn (roughly US$17bn) for the year ended March 2025. Competes in coater/developer track tools that sit alongside ASML scanners.
Canon and Nikon (lithography units)	Not separately disclosed — lithography is a minor part of each diversified parent	Combined DUV lithography share of roughly 10% (about 5% each) against ASML's share of more than 90%, per industry analysis at siliconsemiconductor.net. Neither has a commercial EUV product.

For scheduled results and macro releases across this peer group, see the ChartsView Economic Calendar.

9. Insider Activity

ASML is a foreign private issuer and its management and supervisory board members disclose dealings under EU Market Abuse Regulation rules to the Dutch regulator (AFM) rather than on SEC Form 4. The transactions below were disclosed during 2026 and are aggregated by Hargreaves Lansdown from FactSet-sourced regulatory notifications. Chief Executive Christophe Fouquet appears on both sides of the ledger, with an award-related disposal in February 2026 and a market sale in January 2026.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Birgit M. Conix	22 Jul 2026	Buy	125	€1,556.00	€194,500	Open-market purchase, Supervisory Board
Birgit M. Conix	13 Feb 2026	Buy	254	€1,180.02	€299,725	Open-market purchase, Supervisory Board
Christophe D. Fouquet	3 Feb 2026	Sell	1,553	€1,206.73	€1,874,052	Award/option related
Roger J.M. Dassen	3 Feb 2026	Sell	1,553	€1,206.73	€1,874,052	Award/option related
Frederic Schneider-Maunoury	3 Feb 2026	Sell	1,553	€1,206.73	€1,874,052	Award/option related
Wayne R. Allan	3 Feb 2026	Sell	1,498	€1,206.73	€1,807,682	Award/option related
Christophe D. Fouquet	29 Jan 2026	Sell	1,000	€1,225.00	€1,225,000	Open-market sale
Roger J.M. Dassen	28 Jan 2026	Sell	2,000	€1,300.00	€2,600,000	Open-market sale

The February 2026 disposals cluster on a single date across four executives at an identical price, which is the signature of a scheduled vesting event rather than discretionary selling. The only unambiguously discretionary purchases in the period were the two Supervisory Board buys by Birgit Conix.

10. Key Risks

• Export controls and policy risk: US-led restrictions have already cut China's share of ASML system sales from roughly 49% in 2024 to about 33% in FY2025. Proposed US legislation would extend restrictions to servicing revenue in China, which is higher-margin than tool sales and had been assumed to be insulated. ASML shares fell on 7 April 2026 on proposals of this kind.
• Customer concentration: TSMC alone was approximately 24% of FY2025 net sales and TSMC plus Samsung roughly 38%. Decisions taken in a handful of boardrooms determine a large share of ASML's revenue, and the July 2026 reports of TSMC resisting ASML price increases show that relationship is not frictionless.
• Order cyclicality: net bookings swung from €5,399m in Q3 2025 to €13,158m in Q4 2025 and back to about €5.5bn in Q2 2026. Because bookings are the market's forward indicator, this volatility transmits directly into the share price regardless of reported revenue.
• High-NA execution and adoption: production-grade availability is only targeted for the end of 2026 and imec's qualification target is Q4 2026. ASML is expanding capacity ahead of confirmed high-volume adoption, so a slower ramp would leave that investment underutilised.
• Geopolitical exposure to Taiwan: Taiwan accounted for about 22% of FY2025 system sales and is home to ASML's largest customer. Any disruption to the Taiwanese semiconductor ecosystem would be immediate and severe for ASML.
• Memory and AI capex reversal: memory was about 34% of FY2025 system sales, driven substantially by HBM and DDR5 demand tied to AI infrastructure build-out. A pause in AI data-centre spending, or memory oversupply, would show up in bookings well before it showed up in revenue.
• Valuation compression: at roughly 53x trailing GAAP earnings and about 51x FY2025 free cash flow, the shares embed continued high growth. The 52-week range of US$791.02 to US$1,999.96 demonstrates how quickly that rating can move in either direction.

11. Recent Developments

• 09 Sep 2025 — ASML leads €1.3bn investment in Mistral AI. ASML took a roughly 11% fully diluted stake in the French AI company's Series C, becoming its largest shareholder at a valuation of about €11.7bn and gaining a seat on Mistral's strategic committee.
• 09 Oct 2025 — Marco Pieters appointed Chief Technology Officer. Pieters became EVP and CTO from October 2025, reporting to CEO Christophe Fouquet, with formal shareholder ratification scheduled for the April 2026 AGM.
• 15 Oct 2025 — Q3 2025 results. Net sales of €7,516m, gross margin of 51.6% and net income of €2,125m, with net bookings of €5,399m of which €3.6bn was EUV.
• 28 Jan 2026 — Q4 and FY2025 results plus a new €12bn buyback. FY2025 net sales of €32.7bn and net income of €9.6bn, record Q4 bookings of €13,158m, and the announcement of a 2026–2028 share repurchase programme of up to €12bn.
• 25 Feb 2026 — 2025 Annual Reports published. ASML issued both its US GAAP and IFRS annual reports, including CSRD sustainability statements.
• 07 Apr 2026 — Shares fall on proposed China export curbs. Reports of tightening US restrictions, including measures that could reach servicing revenue in China, knocked the shares.
• 15 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 results. Net sales of €8,767m, gross margin of 53.0% and net income of €2,757m, reported on the same day as further export-control news flow.
• 22 Apr 2026 — 2026 Annual General Meeting held at the TWINSCAN Auditorium in Veldhoven.
• 15 Jul 2026 — Q2 2026 results and a second guidance raise. Net sales of €9,326m, gross margin of 54.0% and net income of €2,918m, all above guidance. FY2026 guidance was lifted to €43–45bn of net sales and 54–56% gross margin, and capacity expansion plans for 2027 were set out.
• 16 Jul 2026 — Reports of a pricing standoff with TSMC. Multiple outlets reported ASML seeking higher tool prices, with some Chinese customers accepting roughly 10% increases on mature DUV systems while TSMC pushed back on low-NA EUV pricing. Neither company has stated publicly how the discussion will be resolved.
• 07 Sep 2026 — Weekly buyback disclosure. ASML continued to report share repurchase transactions under the 2026–2028 programme in its regular Market Abuse Regulation notifications.

12. Key Dates

• 14 Oct 2026 — Q3 2026 results, the next scheduled disclosure of net sales, gross margin and net bookings
• Expected Oct 2026 — declaration of the third 2026 interim dividend, historically announced alongside third-quarter results
• Expected Jan 2027 — Q4 and FY2026 results, based on ASML's consistent late-January reporting pattern; the exact date has not yet been published
• Expected Apr 2027 — 2027 Annual General Meeting, based on the 22 April 2026 precedent
• 10 Jun 2027 — Capital Markets Day, at which management has said it will update its longer-term financial model

ASML's 2030 model, reiterated in the FY2025 Annual Report and carried over from the November 2024 Investor Day, points to an annual revenue opportunity of approximately €44bn to €60bn at a gross margin of approximately 56% to 60%. The June 2027 Capital Markets Day is the scheduled point at which those figures will next be revisited. Discussion of ASML and the wider semiconductor equipment complex continues on the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 15 August 2026

Applied Materials sells the machines that put atoms onto silicon wafers and take them off again. It is the largest semiconductor process-equipment company in the world by revenue, and after four years of low-single-digit growth it has just delivered its steepest quarter on record. Third-quarter FY2026 revenue reached $9,115m, up 25% year on year and up 15% sequentially, with a record 34.0% non-GAAP operating margin and a thirteenth consecutive quarter of gross-margin expansion. Management guided the fourth quarter to $10,250m, which would be 51% growth. The shares nevertheless fell roughly 5% the following day. This report sets out the reported figures, the installed-base annuity that makes the business less cyclical than it looks, the valuation on current multiples, and the risks that remain live. No analyst ratings, no price targets.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Applied Materials, Inc.
Ticker / Exchange	AMAT / NASDAQ
Sector	Information Technology — Semiconductor Materials and Equipment
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California, USA
CEO / Leadership	Gary E. Dickerson, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO since September 2013, re-elected to the board on 12 March 2026). Brice Hill, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Prabu Raja, President, Semiconductor Products Group.
Employees	38,900 regular full-time employees at 26 July 2026, up from 36,400 at the end of the previous quarter and 36,100 a year earlier
Revenue (FY2025, year to 26 Oct 2025)	$28,368m, up 4.4% year on year
Net income (FY2025)	$6,998m; GAAP diluted EPS $8.66; non-GAAP diluted EPS $9.42
Most recent quarter	Q3 FY2026 (to 26 Jul 2026), reported 13 Aug 2026: revenue $9,115m, up 25%; GAAP diluted EPS $3.17; non-GAAP diluted EPS $3.50
Market cap	Approximately $402.7bn (close of 14 Aug 2026, share price $507.18)
Shares outstanding	Approximately 794m (800m diluted weighted average in Q3 FY2026)
Fiscal year end	Last Sunday of October (FY2025 ended 26 Oct 2025)
Dividend	$0.53 per quarter, raised 15% on 13 March 2026; ninth consecutive annual increase. Annualised run-rate $2.12.
Buyback authorisation remaining	$12.8bn at 26 July 2026; target is to return 80–100% of free cash flow

Related ChartsView tools: Live Charts for intraday price action, and the Economic Calendar for the macro releases that drive semiconductor capital spending expectations.

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• The growth inflection is reported, not forecast: after four years averaging roughly 5% growth, Q3 FY2026 revenue rose 25% year on year to $9,115m and 15% sequentially, the largest quarter-on-quarter increase in the company's history. Q4 is guided to $10,250m, which would be 51% growth, with non-GAAP EPS guided to $4.02 against $2.17 a year earlier.
• Margin expansion is structural, not mix luck: non-GAAP operating margin reached a record 34.0% and gross margin expanded year on year for a thirteenth consecutive quarter. Management attributes this to three years of systematic value-based pricing, with company gross margin now above 50% and Semiconductor Systems above 55%.
• The installed-base annuity is larger than the equipment backlog: Applied Global Services carried $7,141m of backlog at FY2025 year end, marginally more than Semiconductor Systems' $7,105m, and AGS grew 22% in Q3 FY2026 at a 30.1% operating margin. More than 37,000 chambers in the field are connected to the proprietary AIx software platform, and management guides AGS to grow over 20% in calendar 2026 with a mid-teens sustainable rate. This is the part of the business that does not disappear in a downcycle.
• Positioned in the fastest-growing parts of wafer fab equipment: management expects leading-edge foundry-logic, DRAM and advanced packaging to represent roughly 80% of wafer fab equipment growth in 2026 and 2027. DRAM revenue including high-bandwidth memory packaging grew 52% year on year to record levels in Q3, packaging revenue is guided to grow over 70% in calendar 2026, and process diagnostics and control over 50%.
• Capital return is consistent and rising: the quarterly dividend was raised 15% to $0.53 on 13 March 2026, the ninth consecutive annual increase, with the payout more than doubling in four years. $12.8bn of buyback authorisation remains and $860m was distributed in Q3 FY2026 alone against a target of returning 80–100% of free cash flow.

Bear Case

• Government investigations are only partly resolved: Applied disclosed subpoenas from the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to China customer shipments and export-controls compliance, and stated it has continued to receive related subpoenas. The BIS strand settled on 11 February 2026 for $252.5m — twice the transaction value, the statutory maximum, and one of the largest such penalties ever — but the DOJ and SEC matters are not disclosed as resolved.
• Building capacity into what may be a cyclical peak: the company added more than 1,500 people in manufacturing and services support in a single quarter, taking headcount from 36,400 to 38,900, having cut roughly 1,400 roles only in November 2025. It is investing to double quarterly system output by 2028. Inventories rose to $6,564m and receivables to $7,691m. If wafer fab equipment demand normalises, that fixed-cost base becomes operating leverage in reverse.
• Extreme customer concentration: two customers accounted for approximately 19% and 15% of FY2025 revenue, roughly 34% between them, up sharply from 12% and 11% in FY2024. A single customer pausing a node ramp is a multi-billion-dollar revenue event, and the 10-K names concentration as a specific risk factor.
• The China exposure is still shrinking and still political: China fell from 37.2% of FY2024 revenue to 30.1% in FY2025 to 28% in Q3 FY2026. Applied guided that the September 2025 expansion of the affiliates rule would reduce FY2026 revenue by roughly $600m, and notes that foreign competitors can still serve Chinese customers it cannot.
• Expectations are demanding and insiders sold the high: the stock reached an all-time high of $739.67 in June 2026, fell roughly 20% into late July, and dropped a further 5% on 14 August 2026 despite beating on revenue and earnings and raising guidance. Across mid-to-late June, the CEO disposed of roughly 151,000 shares for about $99m and other officers a further $60m-plus, with not one of the 30 Form 4s filed in 2026 carrying a Rule 10b5-1 designation, and no open-market purchases at all.

3. Business Segments

Applied reports two principal segments plus a residual. From Q1 FY2026 the 200mm equipment business moved from services into Semiconductor Systems, corporate support costs are now fully allocated to segments, and Display ceased to be a separately reportable segment. Figures below are FY2025 (year to 26 October 2025) on the basis reported in that year's Form 10-K.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Semiconductor Systems	73.3% ($20,798m; operating income $7,379m, 35.5% margin)	Wafer fabrication equipment across the full materials-engineering stack: chemical, physical and atomic-layer deposition and epitaxy, conductor and dielectric etch, chemical mechanical planarisation, ion implantation, thermal processing, eBeam and optical process control, and advanced packaging tools. FY2025 end-market mix was foundry and logic 67%, DRAM 26%, flash memory 7%.
Applied Global Services	22.5% ($6,385m; operating income $1,792m, 28.1% margin)	Spare parts, field service, factory-automation software and subscription service agreements sold against the installed base, plus the legacy 200mm equipment business through FY2025. Recurring and far less cyclical than systems; more than 37,000 field chambers are connected to the AIx monitoring and predictive-analytics platform.
Display and Adjacent Markets	3.7% ($1,060m; operating income $235m, 22.2% margin)	Equipment for LCD and OLED display manufacturing and adjacent markets including augmented-reality optics. De-designated as a reportable segment at FY2025 year end and now reported inside Corporate and Other.
Corporate and Other	4.2% ($1,185m total including Display; operating loss $(882)m)	Unallocated corporate costs of $(1,886)m and restructuring charges of $(181)m, with the Display business sitting inside this line. Consolidated FY2025 operating income was $8,289m, a 29.2% margin.

Total backlog at 26 October 2025 was $15,002m, split Semiconductor Systems $7,105m, Applied Global Services $7,141m and Corporate and Other $756m, with roughly 31% not expected to convert within twelve months.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. Two engines with opposite characteristics. Semiconductor Systems sells lumpy, high-value capital equipment through a direct sales force to a very small number of chipmakers; revenue arrives in large blocks tied to fab construction and node transitions. Applied Global Services sells the aftermarket — spares, service, software and subscription agreements — against every tool ever installed, which produces recurring revenue that grows with the installed base regardless of whether new tools are being bought this quarter. The 10-K states the strategy explicitly: to shift the services and spares business to a subscription agreement model providing a more predictable revenue stream.

Breadth is the differentiator no competitor matches. Applied is the only vendor spanning deposition, etch, planarisation, ion implantation, thermal processing, process control and advanced packaging. Lam Research is deposition, etch and clean; KLA is process control; ASML is lithography; Tokyo Electron is coat and develop plus etch and deposition. The 10-K frames the moat not as the portfolio itself but as the ability to combine, co-optimise and integrate those technologies into differentiated solutions. In Q3 FY2026 the deposition, materials-removal and materials-modification product lines all set records simultaneously — which is what portfolio breadth looks like in a broad-based upcycle.

The switching cost is the recipe, not the tool. Once a deposition or etch chamber is qualified into a customer's process at a given node, requalifying an alternative costs months of cycle time and carries yield risk on a fab running at full capacity. Applied has industrialised this dependency through the EPIC platform, co-locating customer, supplier and university engineers inside its own research cleanroom so that its tools are designed into new architecture inflections years before volume production. Eleven EPIC engagements have been announced to date, including Samsung, TSMC, SK hynix, Micron, Broadcom, Advantest and SCREEN, alongside Arizona State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Pricing power is the visible proof. Management stated that after three years of systematic value-based pricing, gross margin is now above 50% company-wide and above 55% in Semiconductor Systems, with thirteen consecutive quarters of year-on-year gross-margin expansion. A capital-equipment vendor raising price into a demand upcycle without losing share is the clearest evidence that the technical dependency is real.

5. Financial Health

All figures below come from Applied Materials' own quarterly earnings releases, Forms 10-K and 10-Q, and the SEC XBRL company facts dataset. The fiscal year ends on the last Sunday of October. Long-term debt is the non-current balance at each fiscal year end.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021 (to 31 Oct 2021)	23,063	+34.1%	$6.40	$6.84	$0.94	$5,452m
FY2022 (to 30 Oct 2022)	25,785	+11.8%	$7.44	$7.70	$1.02	$5,457m
FY2023 (to 29 Oct 2023)	26,517	+2.8%	$8.11	$8.05	$1.22	$5,461m
FY2024 (to 27 Oct 2024)	27,176	+2.5%	$8.61	$8.65	$1.52	$5,460m
FY2025 (to 26 Oct 2025)	28,368	+4.4%	$8.66	$9.42	$1.78	$6,455m

Notes on the table. FY2023 is the one year in which GAAP EPS exceeded the adjusted figure, on discrete tax items. FY2024 also carried $700m of current-maturity debt; FY2025 carried none, and at the most recent balance sheet date current debt was approximately $1,299m. FY2025 absorbed a $181m restructuring charge under the Fiscal 2025 Restructuring Plan announced in November 2025, covering roughly 4% of the global workforce, and a $41m goodwill impairment, both taken in the fourth quarter. FY2022 was the first full year under the October 2022 US export controls on China.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q3 FY2026 (to 26 Jul 2026)	9,115	$3.50	$3.17
Q2 FY2026 (to 26 Apr 2026)	7,910	$2.86	$3.51
Q1 FY2026 (to 25 Jan 2026)	7,012	$2.38	$2.54
Q4 FY2025 (to 26 Oct 2025)	6,800	$2.17	$2.38
Q3 FY2025 (to 27 Jul 2025)	7,302	$2.48	$2.22
Q2 FY2025 (to 27 Apr 2025)	7,100	$2.39	$2.63
Q1 FY2025 (to 26 Jan 2025)	7,166	$2.38	$1.45
FY2025 total (four quarters to 26 Oct 2025)	28,368	$9.42	$8.66

The three FY2026 quarters at the top of the table sit outside the bold FY2025 total and are shown because Applied is mid-fiscal-year with one quarter left to report. GAAP EPS exceeded adjusted EPS in Q1 and Q2 FY2026 largely because interest and other income reached $1,237m across the first nine months against $625m a year earlier, mostly mark-to-market gains on strategic investments, alongside a low effective tax rate. Q1 FY2026 GAAP results separately absorbed the $253m export-controls legal settlement, which is why GAAP operating margin was 26.1% against 30.0% on a non-GAAP basis that quarter. Across the first nine months of FY2026, revenue was $24,037m against $21,568m, and GAAP diluted EPS $9.22 against $6.29.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Applied is mid-fiscal-year with Q3 FY2026 reported on 13 August 2026, so every trailing figure below is a hand-built twelve months to 26 July 2026 (Q4 FY2025 plus Q1, Q2 and Q3 FY2026), with the balance sheet taken at 26 July 2026. Trailing revenue on that basis is $30,837m, trailing GAAP diluted EPS $11.60 and trailing non-GAAP diluted EPS $10.91. Price and market data are as at the close of 14 August 2026, the session in which the shares fell roughly 5% following the Q3 result.

Metric	Value
Share price	$507.18 (close, 14 Aug 2026), down from $534.54 the previous session
Market cap	Approximately $402.7bn
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	Approximately 43.7x ($507.18 / trailing twelve-month GAAP diluted EPS $11.60). On trailing non-GAAP diluted EPS of $10.91 the same price is roughly 46.5x; GAAP currently sits above the adjusted figure because of investment mark-to-market gains.
P/E (forward)	Approximately 39.7x on the company's own guidance. Adding the guided Q4 FY2026 non-GAAP EPS midpoint of $4.02 to the three reported quarters gives full-year FY2026 non-GAAP EPS of approximately $12.76. A forward twelve-month consensus EPS of roughly $18.09, which spans into FY2027, would put the same price at about 28.0x.
P/S (TTM)	Approximately 13.1x (market cap $402.7bn / trailing revenue $30,837m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	Approximately 41.4x (enterprise value $400.0bn / EBITDA $9,668m). EBITDA is trailing GAAP operating income of $9,141m plus depreciation and amortisation of $527m taken from the cash flow statement add-back. Note that Applied's depreciation charge is small relative to operating income because much of the recent capital expenditure — the EPIC Center and the Singapore campus — is not yet in service, so EBITDA and operating income are unusually close.
P/FCF	Approximately 71.6x (market cap $402.7bn / free cash flow $5,623m; free cash flow is trailing operating cash flow $8,396m less capital expenditure $2,773m per the cash flow statement). Capital expenditure has more than doubled from $1,190m in FY2024, which is depressing free cash flow during the capacity build-out.
Enterprise value	Approximately $400.0bn (market cap $402.7bn plus total debt of approximately $6,544m, being long-term debt $5,245m and current debt approximately $1,299m, less cash and short-term investments $9,233m per the 26 Jul 2026 balance sheet). A further $5,268m of long-term investments is excluded from this calculation; netting those as well would give roughly $394.7bn.
52-week high	$739.67
52-week low	$154.47
Short interest (% of float)	1.80% (14.23m shares short against a float of 767.6m, settlement date 31 Jul 2026). Down 28.5% from 19.91m shares the prior month.
Days to cover	1.51 days
Dividend yield	Approximately 0.42% ($2.12 annualised against a $507.18 share price)

Context worth holding alongside these numbers: Applied at roughly $403bn now trades marginally below Lam Research at $415.9bn, having historically carried a premium to it, and at well under ASML's $708.3bn — despite Applied generating more revenue than either.

7. What Are They Building

Gate-all-around transistor tooling. Capacity additions in gate-all-around and FinFET structures drove record foundry-logic revenue in Q3 FY2026. Three product families launched on 10 February 2026 target this directly: Viva, a pure-radical treatment that smoothens silicon nanosheets at atomic precision; Sym3 Z Magnum, a conductor etch delivering angstrom-level trench-profile control; and Spectral, an atomic-layer deposition system replacing tungsten transistor contacts with molybdenum to cut contact resistance. A further pair followed on 8 April 2026 — Precision Selective Nitride PECVD and Trillium ALD for wrapping nanosheets in complex metal gate stacks.

Backside power delivery. One of the three named co-development targets for the EPIC Center alongside gate-all-around and advanced packaging. Moving power rails to the wafer backside cuts resistive loss and frees front-side routing; Applied is co-locating chipmaker engineering teams inside its own cleanroom to develop the process jointly.

Advanced packaging and hybrid bonding. Management describes Applied as the overall leader in this market with strong positions in high-bandwidth memory and 3D chiplet stacking, and expects packaging revenue to grow more than 70% in calendar 2026. Six systems launched on 25 June 2026 address DRAM and packaging specifically: Opta Quad CMP with in-polish wafer monitoring for hybrid bonding, Nokota VMax 2 electrochemical deposition for through-silicon-via fill and fine-pitch microbumps, Producer Avila 2 PECVD for stress-balanced dielectrics enabling 12- and 16-layer HBM stacks, Centura Prime Epi for selective source-drain doping, and the VeritySEM 7AP and SEMVision G7AP eBeam metrology and defect-review tools for thick, warped heterogeneous substrates.

Panel-level packaging. As accelerator packages outgrow round wafers, Applied is building a portfolio for larger rectangular panel formats spanning digital lithography, deposition, etch and eBeam review. The ASMPT NEXX acquisition announced on 3 May 2026 for $120m in cash was bought explicitly to broaden this, targeting an electrochemical deposition market of roughly $3.5bn.

The EPIC Center, Sunnyvale. The Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization Center is a $4–5bn investment with more than 180,000 square feet of cleanroom, described as the largest commitment to advanced semiconductor equipment research in US history. As at 13 August 2026 the first research tool was about to move into the cleanroom, with operations due to start in the coming months and a formal unveiling scheduled for 12 October 2026.

Manufacturing capacity. Applied is hiring and training to double quarterly system output from current levels by 2028, and is planning a further expansion to have the option to support additional demand by 2030. The $500m Tampines Campus in Singapore, announced 10 June 2026 and opened during Q3 FY2026, more than doubles cleanroom capacity there. A new class of "output innovation products" is in customer qualification, designed to raise wafers processed per square foot of cleanroom — a direct response to customers running out of floor space rather than tools.

8. Competitive Landscape

Semiconductor equipment is a set of near-monopolies rather than a single contested market. Applied competes with Lam Research and Tokyo Electron in deposition and etch, with KLA in process control, and with ASM International in atomic-layer deposition and epitaxy; it does not compete with ASML at all, since it makes no lithography scanners. Market capitalisations are as at the close of 14 August 2026 unless stated.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025/2026 metric
ASML Holding (ASML)	$708.3bn	Q2 2026 net sales of €9,326m, up 21.2% year on year, with a 54.0% gross margin. FY2026 guidance has been raised twice, to €43–45bn from an original €36–40bn. Not a direct competitor — a lithography monopolist and a complementary supplier.
Lam Research (LRCX)	$415.9bn	FY2026 (to 28 Jun 2026) record revenue of $23.23bn, up 26% year on year from $18.44bn, with diluted EPS of $5.82, up 41%. The June quarter was its fourth consecutive record. Directly overlaps Applied in deposition and etch.
KLA Corporation (KLAC)	$266.2bn	FY2026 (to 30 Jun 2026) revenue of $13.58bn with GAAP net income of $4.83bn; record Q4 revenue of $3.66bn. Dominant in process control, the sub-market Applied expects to grow more than 50% in calendar 2026.
Tokyo Electron (8035.T)	$164.0bn (as at 7 Aug 2026)	FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026) revenue of ¥2,443.5bn, up 0.5% year on year, with semiconductor production equipment sales of ¥1,775.4bn; guiding to roughly 40% growth in FY2027. Competes across coat-develop, etch and deposition.
ASM International (ASM.AS)	Trailing twelve-month revenue of $3.71bn as at July 2026; August 2026 market capitalisation not independently verified	Q2 2026 record revenue of €1,003m, its first quarter above €1bn and ahead of the €980m guidance midpoint, at a 51.9% gross margin and 33.0% adjusted operating margin, driven by ALD and epitaxy demand.

Applied's FY2026 revenue will land near $34.3bn on the nine months reported plus the Q4 guide, against Lam's $23.2bn and KLA's $13.6bn, so it remains comfortably the largest process-equipment company by revenue. Management's claim to grow faster than the market was repeated twice on the Q3 call, which is itself an indication that it is a contested point.

9. Insider Activity

President and Chief Executive Officer Gary E. Dickerson has led Applied Materials since September 2013 and was re-elected to the board at the annual meeting on 12 March 2026. Insider activity in 2026 is unusually concentrated and unusually clean-cut: heavy selling clustered into a two-week window in mid-to-late June, at prices between roughly $590 and $736, and effectively nothing since. Not one of the 30 Form 4s Applied filed in calendar 2026 carries the Rule 10b5-1 designation, and there were no open-market purchases by any insider. Selected filings below.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Gary E. Dickerson (President and CEO)	30 Jun 2026	Open-market sale	19,970	$735.22	$14,682,343	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Gary E. Dickerson (President and CEO)	29 Jun 2026	Open-market sale	50,332	$700.21	$35,242,970	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Prabu G. Raja (President, Semiconductor Products Group)	18 Jun 2026	Open-market sale	10,000	$633.53	$6,335,300	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Gary E. Dickerson (President and CEO)	16 Jun 2026	Open-market sale, ten tranches	61,727	$590.52 to $599.35	Approximately $36,657,000	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Omkaram Nalamasu (SVP and CTO)	16 Jun 2026	Open-market sale, seven tranches	24,263	$591.53 to $596.52	Approximately $14,429,000	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Thomas J. Iannotti (Director)	16 Jun 2026	Open-market sale	9,250	$599.77	$5,547,872	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Timothy M. Deane (SVP, Applied Global Services)	15 Jun 2026	Open-market sale	8,621	$590.76	$5,092,984	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Prabu G. Raja (President, Semiconductor Products Group)	4 Jun 2026	Open-market sale, four tranches	50,000	$504.66 to $507.06	Approximately $25,264,000	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Brice Hill (SVP and CFO)	3 Jun 2026	Open-market sale	2,500	$498.86	$1,247,154	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Judy Bruner (Director)	25 Feb 2026	Open-market sale	2,500	$391.71	$979,275	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan
Brice Hill (SVP and CFO)	17 Feb 2026	Open-market sale	5,000	$361.21	$1,806,062	Not under a Rule 10b5-1 plan

Across 15 to 30 June 2026 Mr Dickerson disposed of roughly 151,000 shares for about $99m, cutting his beneficial holding from approximately 1,766,891 to 1,599,843 shares, a reduction of around 9.5%; that remaining position still includes 379,244 unvested performance and restricted stock units vesting between December 2026 and 2028. Nine non-executive directors received annual equity awards of 741 shares each on 12 March 2026, and separate gift transfers were recorded by Mr Dickerson (17,000 shares) and director Aart de Geus (17,855 shares); those are excluded from the table as they are not open-market disposals.

10. Key Risks

• Unresolved government investigations: Applied has disclosed subpoenas from the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning China customer shipments and export-controls compliance, and stated that it continues to receive related subpoenas and requests for information. The BIS matter settled on 11 February 2026 for $252.5m, but the DOJ and SEC strands are not disclosed as resolved, and the 10-K warns of possible fines, penalties, restrictions on the business and reputational damage.
• China export controls and a shrinking China mix: China revenue has fallen from 37.2% of FY2024 to 30.1% of FY2025 to 28% in Q3 FY2026. Applied guided that the September 2025 expansion of the affiliates rule would cut FY2026 revenue by roughly $600m, and notes that foreign competitors remain able to serve Chinese customers it cannot. Management now expects China revenue to rise in calendar 2026 on 28nm foundry-logic investment, but that is a forecast rather than a result.
• Wafer fab equipment cyclicality and the risk of building into the peak: revenue is guided to rise from $6,800m in Q4 FY2025 to $10,250m in Q4 FY2026 while the company invests to double quarterly output by 2028, having added more than 1,500 heads in one quarter only months after cutting 1,400 roles. Inventories rose to $6,564m and receivables to $7,691m. Analysts already cite near-term gross-margin headwinds from accelerating capital expenditure and headcount expansion.
• Extreme customer concentration: two customers accounted for approximately 19% and 15% of FY2025 revenue, up from 12% and 11% in FY2024, and geographic disclosure points to Taiwan at 27% and Korea at 20% of recent quarterly revenue. The 10-K names the concentrated nature of the customer base as a specific risk factor. A single node-ramp deferral is a multi-billion-dollar event.
• Competitive share risk in deposition and etch: Lam Research grew FY2026 revenue 26% to $23.23bn with its June quarter up 30%, and ASM International set a record quarter on atomic-layer deposition and epitaxy. Both overlap Applied's core franchises directly, and Applied's own claim to grow faster than the market is the explicit test of whether it is holding share.
• Tariffs and Section 232 exposure: a 25% Section 232 tariff on certain advanced semiconductors took effect on 15 January 2026. The first phase imposed no direct tariff on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, but a possible second phase covering deposition systems, etch chambers and metrology tools has been flagged. Applied's own risk factors name new or increased tariffs and retaliatory measures, and China has already imposed retaliatory duties on US goods.
• Memory capital spending volatility: DRAM including HBM packaging grew 52% year on year and is now 26% of Semiconductor Systems revenue, with management guiding to a very significant further increase in the second half of calendar 2026. Memory capital expenditure is historically the most violent line in wafer fab equipment spending, and a memory pricing correction would hit the fastest-growing part of the mix first.
• Valuation against elevated expectations: the shares hit an all-time high of $739.67 in June 2026, fell roughly 20% into late July, and dropped a further 5% on 14 August 2026 despite beating on both revenue and earnings and raising guidance. At $507.18 the stock still trades near 40x guided FY2026 non-GAAP earnings, with insiders having sold roughly $160m into the June high and bought nothing.
• Geopolitical and Taiwan Strait concentration: Taiwan represented 27% of Q2 FY2026 revenue and Korea 20%, so close to half of revenue sits in two jurisdictions on China's periphery. The 10-K names geopolitical turmoil and supplier capacity as risk factors, and the plan to double output by 2028 raises dependence on the supply chain scaling in step. A regional disruption would hit demand and delivery simultaneously.

11. Recent Developments

• 11 Feb 2026 — Resolution reached with the US Department of Commerce for $252.5m. The Bureau of Industry and Security announced a civil settlement with Applied Materials and Applied Materials Korea over alleged unauthorised reexports of controlled equipment to a restricted Chinese entity; the penalty was twice the transaction value, the statutory maximum, and was recorded as a $253m charge in Q1 FY2026.
• 11 Feb 2026 — Samsung Electronics becomes the first chipmaker to join the EPIC Center. The anchor customer commitment for the Sunnyvale research facility.
• 12 Feb 2026 — Q1 FY2026 results. Revenue of $7,012m, down 2% year on year, with GAAP EPS of $2.54 and non-GAAP EPS of $2.38, alongside record DRAM revenue in Semiconductor Systems and record services and spares revenue.
• 10 Mar 2026 — Memory partnerships with SK hynix and Micron announced the same day. A long-term research partnership with SK hynix at the EPIC Center covering next-generation DRAM, HBM and 3D advanced packaging, and a partnership with Micron linking EPIC to Micron's Boise innovation centre.
• 13 Mar 2026 — Quarterly dividend raised 15% from $0.46 to $0.53 per share. The ninth consecutive year of increases, taking the annualised run-rate to $2.12 and more than doubling the payout over four years.
• 03 May 2026 — Acquisition of ASMPT's NEXX business for $120m in cash. Adds large-area electrochemical deposition and physical vapour deposition equipment, broadening the panel-level advanced packaging portfolio.
• 11 May 2026 — TSMC signs an EPIC Center innovation partnership. Arizona State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Stanford were named inaugural academic research partners the same day.
• 14 May 2026 — Q2 FY2026 results. Record revenue of $7,910m, up 11%, with record GAAP EPS of $3.51 and record non-GAAP EPS of $2.86; the CEO raised the calendar-2026 semiconductor equipment growth forecast from over 20% to more than 30%.
• 10 Jun 2026 — $500m Tampines Campus announced in Singapore. More than doubles advanced cleanroom capacity there in support of the AI build-out; opened during Q3 FY2026.
• 25 Jun 2026 — Six new systems launched for DRAM and advanced packaging. Centura Prime Epi, Opta Quad CMP, Nokota VMax 2 ECD, Producer Avila 2 PECVD, VeritySEM 7AP and SEMVision G7AP.
• 11 Aug 2026 — UC Berkeley joins the EPIC Center as a research collaborator. The eleventh announced EPIC engagement.
• 13 Aug 2026 — Q3 FY2026 results: record revenue of $9,115m, up 25%. Record non-GAAP EPS of $3.50 and a record 34.0% non-GAAP operating margin, with Q4 guided to $10,250m and non-GAAP EPS of $4.02. The shares fell roughly 5% the following session on the China revenue mix decline and margin-headwind concerns from the capacity ramp.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 20 Aug 2026 — ex-dividend date for the $0.53 quarterly dividend declared on 9 June 2026, per dividend data providers; verify against the company declaration
• 10 Sep 2026 — payment date for the $0.53 quarterly dividend
• 12 Oct 2026 — formal unveiling of the EPIC Center in Sunnyvale, California, confirmed on the Q3 FY2026 earnings call and timed to coincide with SEMICON West
• 13 Oct 2026 — Applied Materials investor breakfast at the Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco, with Gary Dickerson, Brice Hill and business-unit leaders in person and by webcast; the closest event to an analyst day on the calendar
• Expected late October 2026 — fiscal year 2026 closes; the prior year ended 26 October 2025
• Expected late October 2026 — Applied issues the press release confirming its Q4 FY2026 reporting date; the equivalent notice for Q3 came on 23 July 2026
• Expected November 2026 — Q4 and full-year FY2026 results. No date has been announced as at 15 August 2026; the three prior years reported on 13 November 2025, 14 November 2024 and 16 November 2023
• Expected November 2026 — the annual dividend review window, based on the pattern of increases announced each March and declarations made quarterly
• Expected February 2027 — Q1 FY2027 results, which management has flagged will cover a 14-week quarter with an outsized operating expense step-up
• Expected March 2027 — annual meeting of shareholders; the 2026 meeting was held on 12 March 2026
• TBC — completion or further disclosure on the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission export-controls investigations, which remain open

Discussion of Applied's results and the wider wafer fab equipment cycle continues on the ChartsView Forum, and price action around each of these dates can be tracked on Live Charts.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 13 August 2026

Analog Devices is the world's second-largest analog semiconductor company by market value, and one of the very few chipmakers whose products are measured in decades rather than product cycles. It designs high-performance analog, mixed-signal, power and digital-signal-processing integrated circuits that sit at the boundary between the physical world and digital computation — sensing, converting, conditioning and powering. FY2025 revenue was $11,019.7m across roughly several thousand analog ICs, sold into four end markets: Industrial, Automotive, Communications and Consumer. After a brutal FY2024 inventory correction that cut revenue 23.4%, ADI has staged an unusually sharp recovery: Q2 FY2026 revenue rose 37% year on year to a record $3,623m, adjusted gross margin hit a record 73.0%, and management guided the current quarter to $3.9bn. The engine has changed too — data centre now accounts for more than three-quarters of Communications revenue, and on 7 July 2026 ADI closed a $1.5bn all-cash acquisition of Empower Semiconductor to move into vertical power delivery for AI processors. This report sets out what the filings say, with Q3 FY2026 results due on 19 August 2026.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Analog Devices, Inc.
Listing	NASDAQ Global Select Market, ticker ADI (common stock, $0.16 2/3 par value)
Sector / industry	Technology — Semiconductors & Related Devices (SEC SIC 3674)
CEO / Leadership	Vincent Roche, Chief Executive Officer and Chair. Richard Puccio, EVP & Chief Financial Officer. No succession has been announced; Roche was re-elected to the board at the 11 March 2026 annual meeting
Headquarters	One Analog Way, Wilmington, Massachusetts, USA
Founded	Incorporated in Massachusetts in 1965
Employees	Approximately 24,500 as of 1 November 2025, of whom about 13,000 are in engineering roles; FY2025 voluntary turnover 7.2% (FY2025 Form 10-K)
Fiscal year	52/53 weeks ending the Saturday nearest 31 October. FY2025 ended 1 November 2025
Market cap	$187.25bn (487,087,040 shares at the $384.43 close of 12 August 2026)
Revenue (FY2025)	$11,019.7m, up 16.9% year on year
Net income (FY2025)	$2,267.3m GAAP; GAAP diluted EPS $4.56, adjusted diluted EPS $7.79
Dividend	$1.10 per share per quarter, $4.40 annualised. Raised 11% in February 2026, the 22nd consecutive annual increase
Shares outstanding	487,087,040 as of 2 May 2026
Patents	Approximately 4,780 US patents plus around 500 published pending US applications as of 1 November 2025

2. Bull Case & Bear Case

Bull Case

• Cyclical recovery with record margins: Q2 FY2026 revenue of $3,623m was up 37% year on year with adjusted gross margin at a record 73.0% and adjusted operating margin 49.0%, all above the high end of guidance. Management guided Q3 FY2026 to $3.9bn plus or minus $100m and adjusted EPS of $3.30 plus or minus $0.15 — implying the recovery is still accelerating, not flattening.
• AI data centre has become a real growth engine: Communications revenue rose 79% year on year in Q2 FY2026, and on the earnings call management said data centre now represents more than three-quarters of that end market, with growth split roughly equally between the power and optical portfolios. Data-centre revenue grew around 50% in FY2025 and accelerated again in FY2026.
• Empower Semiconductor buys a seat at the AI power table: the $1.5bn all-cash acquisition closed on 7 July 2026, bringing Integrated Voltage Regulator and silicon-capacitor technology for high-density power delivery directly at the processor. Empower's silicon capacitors are already in production and IVR programmes are running with hyperscalers and AI silicon providers; ADI positions the combination as a grid-to-core power partner across the AI stack.
• Structurally high cash generation and an unbroken capital-return record: free cash flow was $4,565m on a trailing-twelve-month basis to 2 May 2026, 36% of revenue, and $5,043m was returned to shareholders over the same period. The dividend has risen for 22 consecutive years and $9.7bn of buyback authorisation remained available at FY2025 year end.
• Products with unusually long lives and no single dominant customer: ADI states its analog ICs typically have long product life cycles, with many individual parts serving several hundred end customers and no end customer above 10% of revenue. That combination of design-in stickiness and breadth is what has historically let the company hold pricing through downturns.

Bear Case

• The comparison base is now brutally hard: a record 73.0% adjusted gross margin and 49.0% adjusted operating margin achieved on 37% revenue growth is a demanding platform from which to grow. ADI's own risk factors describe the semiconductor market as "cyclical and subject to significant economic downturns," and its FY2023-to-FY2024 revenue drop of 23.4% is the recent proof of exactly how fast that reverses.
• Working capital is already flashing amber: inventory rose from $1,656.3m at 1 November 2025 to $1,848.4m at 2 May 2026, and receivables jumped from $1,436.1m to $2,051.7m. That $808.0m working-capital outflow cut Q2 FY2026 operating cash flow to 24% of revenue from 43% in Q1. Inventory build into a demand air-pocket is how the last correction started.
• China is a larger dependency than ever, into a tightening export regime: China was $2,858.3m of FY2025 revenue, 25.9% of the total and up 34% year on year, ADI's largest market after the United States. Its own disclosure states export restrictions "have impacted our revenues and results of operations in China and elsewhere," and management has acknowledged greater China exposure than at any prior point.
• Automotive, 30% of FY2025 revenue, has stalled: the segment grew just 2% year on year in Q2 FY2026 and 5% over six months, against Industrial at 56% and Communications at 79%. Its share of quarterly revenue fell from 32% to 24% in a year. Growth is explicitly content-led rather than unit-led, so it depends on per-vehicle content gains and on China ADAS adoption timing.
• Two unresolved cybersecurity matters and a widening balance sheet: ADI disclosed on 29 July 2026 that its investigation into a 23 June 2026 unauthorised access "has found that certain files were exfiltrated," with the scope still being determined, plus a separate 26 July 2026 matter still being assessed. Separately, long-term debt rose from $6,634.3m at FY2024 year end to $8,145.1m at FY2025 year end, and ADI added a second $3.0bn revolver on 2 July 2026 carrying an EBITDA-to-interest covenant of at least 3.00 to 1.00.

3. Revenue Segments

ADI reports a single operating segment but discloses revenue across four end markets. FY2025 figures are per the FY2025 Form 10-K.

Segment / end market	% of revenue	What it is
Industrial — $4,929.4m FY2025, up 15%	45%	Industrial automation (condition-based monitoring, industrial power supplies, robotics, motion control, factory and process control), instrumentation and measurement, aerospace and defence, and electronic test and measurement. ADI attributes FY2025 growth to customer inventory normalising plus strength in test equipment and aerospace and defence.
Automotive — $3,277.9m FY2025, up 16%	30%	Signal-processing content across electrification, digital cabin and autonomous platforms: audio, voice processing and connectivity, battery monitoring and management, video processing and networking, and intelligent power. Key platforms are GMSL, functionally safe power and the A2B automotive audio bus.
Consumer — $1,434.6m FY2025, up 19%	13%	Portable devices — smartphones, tablets, handheld gaming and wearables — for media and vital-signs monitoring, prosumer audio and video equipment, and hearable devices including headphones, earbuds and hearing health.
Communications — $1,377.9m FY2025, up 26%	13%	Wireless communications (cellular base stations, satellite and terrestrial broadband access, microwave backhaul, two-way radio, fixed wireless access) and Data Center. Management stated on the Q2 FY2026 call that data centre is now more than three-quarters of this end market.

ADI assigns revenue to end markets using product technical characteristics together with "sold to" and "ship to" customer data and end application, and restates prior periods when the methodology changes. This is why the FY2026 quarterly mix — Automotive 24% and Communications 15% in Q2 FY2026 — differs materially from the FY2025 annual mix above.

4. Business Model & Moat

How it makes money. ADI sells high-performance analog, mixed-signal, power and DSP integrated circuits, increasingly bundled with software and reference designs. The portfolio runs to several thousand analog ICs, many of which serve several hundred end customers each. Around 56% of FY2025 revenue went through third-party distributors and roughly 44% direct. Revenue is recognised on product shipment; there is no meaningful subscription or recurring-licence component.

Where the moat comes from. Three things, in ADI's own framing. First, product longevity — the 10-K states analog ICs "typically have long product life cycles," so a design win can pay out for a decade or more and the installed base is expensive for a customer to re-qualify away from. Second, breadth without concentration: no end customer exceeds 10% of revenue, so no single design loss is structurally damaging. Third, an engineering-heavy support model — roughly 13,000 of 24,500 employees are engineers, backed by field application engineers who embed ADI parts into customer designs, plus web-based selection and design tools.

The hybrid manufacturing model. ADI runs internal wafer fabs in Wilmington, Massachusetts; Camas, Washington; Beaverton, Oregon; and Limerick, Ireland, with assembly, wafer sort and test in Penang, Malaysia (now classified as held for sale), the Philippines and Thailand. It states it "source[s] more than half of our wafer requirements annually from third-party wafer fabrication foundries, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and others," with the remainder internal. That flexes utilisation up in an upturn and offloads fixed cost in a downturn — and is a direct reason the FY2026 gross margin recovery has been so steep. It is also a concentration risk, which ADI acknowledges alongside "tensions across the Taiwan Strait."

Capital return policy. ADI raised the quarterly dividend 11% to $1.10 in February 2026, its 22nd consecutive annual increase. Cumulative buybacks stand at roughly 216.5 million shares for about $17.0bn against a total authorisation of $26.7bn, leaving $9.7bn available at FY2025 year end. In FY2025 the company returned 96% of free cash flow to shareholders: $2.2bn of buybacks plus $1.9bn of dividends against $4,279m of free cash flow. FY2026 capital expenditure is guided at 4% to 6% of revenue.

Customer and channel concentration. No end customer is above 10% of revenue, but distribution is concentrated: one distributor was 24% of FY2025 revenue and a second 13%. Distributors can terminate representation with little advance notice, receive price-adjustment credits and can return qualifying product for credit — so channel inventory decisions sit partly outside ADI's control.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are from ADI's Form 10-K filings, quarterly earnings press releases and SEC XBRL company facts. Fiscal years are ADI fiscal years ending the Saturday nearest 31 October.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021 (ended 30 Oct 2021)	7,318.3	+30.6%	$3.46	$6.46	$2.69†	$6,253.2m
FY2022 (ended 29 Oct 2022)	12,014.0	+64.2%	$5.25	$9.57	$2.97	$6,548.6m
FY2023 (ended 28 Oct 2023)	12,305.5	+2.4%	$6.55	$10.09	$3.34	$5,902.5m
FY2024 (ended 2 Nov 2024)‡	9,427.2	−23.4%	$3.28	$6.38	$3.62	$6,634.3m
FY2025 (ended 1 Nov 2025)	11,019.7	+16.9%	$4.56	$7.79	$3.89	$8,145.1m

† FY2021 is dividends cash paid per share; ADI's XBRL dividends-declared-per-share tag begins in FY2022, so a declared-basis FY2021 figure is not available as a tagged primary figure. ‡ FY2024 was a 53-week year (371 days); FY2023 and FY2025 were 52-week years. The FY2024 decline therefore understates the per-week cyclical fall, and FY2025's +16.9% recovery is measured against a 53-week base, so underlying weekly growth was higher than 16.9%. Long-term debt is the non-current balance; current maturities were $0 in FY2022 and FY2025, $499.1m in FY2023 and $399.6m in FY2024. FY2021 revenue includes only a partial year of Maxim Integrated, which closed in August 2021, so the FY2021-to-FY2022 step-up is not organic.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 FY2026 (ended 2 May 2026)	$3,623m	$3.09	$2.40
Q1 FY2026 (ended 31 Jan 2026)	$3,160m	$2.46	$1.69
Q4 FY2025 (ended 1 Nov 2025)	$3,076m	$2.26	$1.60
Q3 FY2025 (ended 2 Aug 2025)	$2,880m	$2.05	$1.04
Q2 FY2025 (ended 3 May 2025)	$2,640m	$1.85	$1.14
FY2025 full year	$11,020m	$7.79	$4.56

Cash flow and balance sheet. FY2025 operating cash flow was $4,812.2m against capital expenditure of $533.6m, giving free cash flow of $4,278.7m — 39% of revenue. Depreciation was $406.8m and amortisation of intangibles $1,592.0m, a combined $1,998.8m; the amortisation line is dominated by Maxim and Linear Technology purchase accounting and is the single largest GAAP-to-adjusted bridge item, running at $394.0m of acquisition-related expense in Q2 FY2026 alone. On a trailing-twelve-month basis to 2 May 2026, operating cash flow was $5,106.5m, capital expenditure $541.3m and free cash flow $4,565.2m. At 2 May 2026 ADI held $2,436.9m of cash and equivalents plus $1,002.4m of short-term investments, against $7,235.4m of non-current long-term debt, $899.2m of current maturities and $550.2m of commercial paper — total debt of $8,684.8m. The nearest bond maturity is the $900.0m 2026 Notes due December 2026, already reclassified to current. Note that the $1.5bn Empower Semiconductor purchase closed on 7 July 2026, after this balance-sheet date, and will have reduced the cash balance accordingly.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Share price	$384.43 at the close of 12 August 2026 (prior session $385.30)
Market cap	$187.25bn (487,087,040 shares at $384.43)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	57.5x on trailing-twelve-month GAAP diluted EPS of $6.69. On trailing adjusted EPS of $9.86 (Q3 FY2025 $2.05 + Q4 FY2025 $2.26 + Q1 FY2026 $2.46 + Q2 FY2026 $3.09) the multiple is 39.0x. The gap is almost entirely acquisition-related amortisation from Maxim and Linear Technology.
P/E (forward)	25.5x on a forward EPS estimate of $15.06
P/S (TTM)	14.7x (market cap $187.25bn / trailing-twelve-month revenue $12,740.2m to 2 May 2026)
Enterprise value	$192.50bn (market cap $187.25bn + total debt $8,684.8m − cash and short-term investments $3,439.3m per the 2 May 2026 balance sheet). Total debt is $7,235.4m non-current long-term debt + $899.2m current maturities + $550.2m commercial paper.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	31.5x (EV $192.50bn / trailing-twelve-month EBITDA $6,104.0m). EBITDA is trailing operating income of $4,139.9m plus depreciation of $418.9m and amortisation of intangibles of $1,545.2m. The wider amortisation-inclusive D&A total is used here, which is what makes ADI's EBITDA multiple look far cheaper than its GAAP P/E.
P/FCF	41.0x (market cap $187.25bn / free cash flow $4,565.2m; FCF = trailing operating cash flow $5,106.5m − capital expenditure $541.3m per the cash flow statement)
Dividend yield	1.14% ($4.40 annualised / $384.43)
52-week high	$445.91 intraday on 22 June 2026; closing-basis high $445.48 the same day. The current price is 13.7% below that close.
52-week low	$223.47 intraday on 7 November 2025; closing-basis low $225.20 on 20 November 2025. The current price is 72.0% above that intraday low.
Short interest (% of float)	2.24% — 9,768,175 shares short at the 31 July 2026 settlement date against a free float of 468.3m shares. Short interest peaked near 12.0m shares in June 2026 and has fallen about 19% since.
Days to cover	2.3 (short interest ratio at the 31 July 2026 settlement date)

You can chart ADI against its peer set on our Live Charts page, and track the macro releases that drive semiconductor demand on the Economic Calendar.

7. What Are They Building

Research and development. ADI spent $1,766.0m on R&D in FY2025, 16% of revenue, up 19% on FY2024's $1,487.9m. Q2 FY2026 R&D was $509.3m, up 15% year on year, with $976.7m spent in the first half of FY2026.

Data-centre power — the flagship bet. ADI announced the acquisition of Empower Semiconductor of Milpitas, California on 19 May 2026 for $1.5bn in cash and completed it on 7 July 2026. The rationale in ADI's own words: "As AI compute scales, power density — not just total watts — has become the limiting factor... By enabling power conversion closer to the processor, the combined solution shortens the power delivery path and improves efficiency." Empower brings Integrated Voltage Regulator technology and silicon capacitors, the latter already in production, with IVR programmes advancing alongside hyperscalers and AI silicon providers. Empower CEO Tim Phillips continues to lead IVR development inside ADI. Management expects a more meaningful revenue contribution in FY2027. Separately, ADI has disclosed that it shipped its smart power stage to a first vertical power customer and is seeing accelerating adoption of intermediate bus converter modules for 48V and 54V rack distribution. Power delivery is roughly a third of data-centre power revenue and DC power control another third. ADI has not named specific hyperscaler design wins and publishes no content-per-rack dollar figure.

Automotive connectivity. ADI released A2B 2.0, the second generation of its Automotive Audio Bus, to production on 28 April 2026. On the Q2 FY2026 call it named GMSL, functionally safe power and A2B as the three key automotive content-expansion platforms, and noted that EV battery management systems returned to year-on-year growth after an extended decline, driven by EV penetration in Europe and China. GMSL and E2B are being demonstrated together in software-defined-vehicle applications, and a GMSL-enabled multi-camera perception system for robotic vision has been shown using automotive-grade links for visual SLAM. TIER IV has launched a GMSL2-to-10GbE conversion module jointly with ADI.

Software and tools. CodeFusion Studio 2.0, an upgrade to ADI's open-source embedded development platform, launched on 3 November 2025 with an integrated debug ecosystem, memory visualisation, enhanced GDB tooling, coredump analysis and a concept-stage AI debug assistant. ADI Power Studio and a set of new web-based design tools launched on 14 October 2025. The FY2025 10-K frames the wider push as expanding "capabilities in software, digital platforms and AI... intended to enhance system-level performance, improve design efficiency, reduce complexity and help customers accelerate time to market."

Robotics and health. Industrial automation explicitly includes industrial robotics, where ADI says it co-creates with customers on dynamic behaviour, precision, worker safety and machine health. At Embedded World 2026 it demonstrated real-time depth sensing, object recognition and gesture interpretation for manufacturing, healthcare and service robotics. The Consumer end market covers vital-signs monitoring in wearables and hearing-health devices.

Manufacturing capacity. The disclosed capacity programme predates 2026: more than $1bn announced in July 2023 to expand Beaverton, Oregon and convert it to a full 8-inch fab; a finalised $12m CHIPS Act award for Oregon; up to $105m of proposed direct CHIPS funding for Camas, Washington under a non-binding memorandum of terms signed on 16 January 2025; and a 45,000 sq ft R&D and manufacturing expansion at the Limerick, Ireland campus. No new fab announcement was made between 1 May and 13 August 2026; forward capital expenditure is guided only as 4% to 6% of FY2026 revenue. The Penang, Malaysia assembly and test facility is being sold, not expanded.

8. Peer Comparison

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN)	$252.60bn, checked 13 August 2026	FY2025 revenue $17,682m for the year ended 31 December 2025, up from $15,641m in FY2024; trailing-twelve-month revenue $19,453m
Infineon Technologies (XETRA: IFX)	€81.99bn, approximately $94.5bn at 13 August 2026 rates	Trailing-twelve-month revenue €15,591m, approximately $18.0bn, at a gross margin of 41.1%
NXP Semiconductors (NASDAQ: NXPI)	$58.86bn, checked 13 August 2026	Trailing-twelve-month revenue $13,185m at a gross margin of 56.1%
STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM)	$48.36bn, checked 13 August 2026	FY2025 revenue $11,800m for the year ended 31 December 2025, down from $13,269m in FY2024; trailing-twelve-month revenue $13,099m
Microchip Technology (NASDAQ: MCHP)	$43.14bn, checked 13 August 2026	FY2026 revenue $4,713.1m for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, up from $4,401.6m in FY2025
Renesas Electronics (TSE: 6723)	¥6,933bn, approximately $43.5bn at 13 August 2026 rates	Trailing-twelve-month revenue ¥1,486bn, approximately $9.3bn, at a gross margin of 58.8%

ADI's $187.25bn market capitalisation is second only to Texas Instruments in this group despite generating roughly 65% of TXN's trailing revenue — the gap reflects ADI's margin structure, with FY2025 adjusted gross margin of 69.3% rising to a record 73.0% in Q2 FY2026. Note that TXN, NXPI, STM and Infineon report on calendar years, Microchip's fiscal year ends 31 March, and Renesas reports in yen, so revenue figures are not directly period-comparable.

9. Insider Activity

Chief Executive Officer and Chair Vincent Roche has been the most active seller, running an identical 10,000-share option exercise and immediate sale at a $108.08 strike in each of June, July and August 2026, at successively lower realised prices. Co-founder and director Ray Stata has sold a roughly 2,832-share tranche each month, and director Karen Golz has sold 1,000 shares monthly under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 12 March 2026. ADI has filed 50 Form 4s so far in 2026. Every reported open-market transaction in 2026 was a sale; no open-market insider purchases were found. Aggregate disposals across the eight filings below total approximately $21.8m.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Ray Stata	05 Aug 2026	Sale	1,416	$375.63–$383.44	~$536,000	Open market, no 10b5-1 footnote
Ray Stata	04 Aug 2026	Sale	1,416	$370.17–$381.80	~$534,400	Open market, no 10b5-1 footnote
Vincent Roche	03 Aug 2026	Option exercise and sale	10,000	$363.00 (strike $108.08)	$3,630,000	Exercise and sell, no 10b5-1 footnote
Karen Golz	13 Jul 2026	Sale	1,000	$389.83	$389,830	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 12 Mar 2026
Ray Stata	07–08 Jul 2026	Sale	2,832	$371.48–$388.73	~$1,079,000	Open market, no 10b5-1 footnote
Vincent Roche	01 Jul 2026	Option exercise and sale	10,000	$389.75 (strike $108.08)	$3,897,500	Exercise and sell, no 10b5-1 footnote
Karen Golz	12 Jun 2026	Sale	1,000	$411.95	$411,950	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 12 Mar 2026
Martin Cotter	02 Jun 2026	Option exercise and sale	17,594	$418.00 (strike $83.48)	$7,354,292	Exercise and sell, no 10b5-1 footnote
Vincent Roche	01 Jun 2026	Option exercise and sale	10,000	$404.25 (strike $108.08)	$4,042,500	Exercise and sell, no 10b5-1 footnote

10. Key Risks

• Semiconductor cyclicality and inventory correction: ADI's own 10-K states "the semiconductor market has historically been cyclical and subject to significant economic downturns at various times." Revenue fell from $12,305.5m in FY2023 to $9,427.2m in FY2024, a 23.4% decline, before recovering to $11,019.7m in FY2025. Inventory is building again — $1,848.4m at 2 May 2026 against $1,656.3m at 1 November 2025 — and receivables rose 42.9% over the same two quarters, which together cut Q2 FY2026 operating cash flow to 24% of revenue from 43% in Q1. Inventories are written down to net realisable value based on what ADI calls "significant judgments made by us about future demand."
• China exposure and export controls: China was $2,858.3m, or 25.9%, of FY2025 revenue, up 34% year on year, second only to the United States at $3,238.1m. ADI discloses that export restrictions "limit our ability to sell to certain Chinese companies and to third parties that do business with those companies" and that these "have impacted our revenues and results of operations in China and elsewhere." Management has acknowledged greater China exposure than at any prior point, which cuts both ways.
• Tariffs and trade policy: ADI lists "import, export or sector-based tariffs, changes to export classifications or other restrictions imposed by the U.S. government," particularly regarding China, as a specific risk factor, and states that additional duties or retaliatory action "have had and may continue to have an adverse effect" on results. A concrete effect has already been observed: tariff-driven customer pull-ins during 2025 pulled demand forward and contributed to a below-seasonal Q1 FY2026. ADI has not published a quantified Section 232 exposure figure.
• Automotive stagnation: Automotive was $3,277.9m and 30% of FY2025 revenue but grew only 2% year on year in Q2 FY2026 and 5% over six months, cutting its share of quarterly revenue from 32% to 24% in a year. Growth is content-led rather than unit-led, so it depends on continued per-vehicle content gains against a soft unit backdrop and on China ADAS adoption timing, including the arrival of Level 3 systems.
• Distributor concentration and channel risk: 56% of FY2025 revenue flowed through third-party distributors, with one distributor at 24% of revenue and another at 13%. ADI's risk factor notes distributors "generally represent product lines offered by several companies and thus could reduce their sales efforts for our products" and "could terminate their representation of us with little advance notice." Distributors also receive price-adjustment credits and may return qualifying product for credit, so channel inventory decisions are only partly within ADI's control.
• Foundry and subcontractor dependence: ADI sources more than half its annual wafer requirements from third-party foundries, principally TSMC, and makes extensive use of third-party subcontractors for assembly and test. Its own language warns that "a prolonged disruption, shut-down or inability to utilize one or more of our or our third parties' manufacturing facilities" could "delay production, shipments and revenue," and it separately flags "tensions across the Taiwan Strait that may adversely affect our operations in Taiwan, our customers and the technology industry supply chain."
• Pricing pressure and competitive erosion: "Increased competition in certain markets has resulted in and may continue to result in declining average selling prices, reduced gross margins and loss of market share in those markets." ADI also flags that consolidation among competitors "could negatively impact our competitive position and market share." The current record 73.0% adjusted gross margin makes the forward comparison base unusually demanding.
• Cybersecurity — two live, unresolved matters: ADI disclosed in an 8-K on 29 July 2026 that its investigation into a 23 June 2026 unauthorised access "has found that certain files were exfiltrated," with the scope of the exfiltrated information still under investigation, and separately that on 26 July 2026 it "was made aware of public reports regarding a disparate cybersecurity matter and is currently assessing its validity, scope, and any potential impact." ADI's own listed downside risks include potential regulatory inquiries and litigation, effects on customer and regulator relationships, and the availability of insurance coverage. Its position that the June incident is not "reasonably likely to materially impact its business" is explicitly provisional. The shares fell 3.21% on the disclosure date.
• Leverage and currency exposure: long-term debt rose from $6,634.3m at FY2024 year end to $8,145.1m at FY2025 year end, and ADI added a second $3.0bn revolving facility on 2 July 2026 carrying an EBITDA-to-interest covenant of at least 3.00 to 1.00. On foreign exchange, the FY2025 10-K states that "an immediate 10% unfavorable movement in foreign currency exchange rates would result in approximately $89.6 million of losses" on net unhedged exposures, up sharply from $32.2m a year earlier, with the euro the largest single exposure.

11. Recent Developments

• 19 May 2026 — ADI agrees to buy Empower Semiconductor for $1.5bn in cash. The all-cash deal adds Integrated Voltage Regulator and silicon-capacitor technology for high-density power delivery to AI processors. Approved by both boards and subject to the HSR waiting period, with a targeted close in the second half of calendar 2026.
• 19 May 2026 — Board declares a quarterly dividend of $1.10 per share. Ex-dividend and record date 2 June 2026, payable 16 June 2026.
• 20 May 2026 — Record Q2 FY2026 results beat the high end of guidance. Revenue $3,623m, up 37% year on year; GAAP diluted EPS $2.40; adjusted diluted EPS $3.09; adjusted gross margin a record 73.0%; adjusted operating margin 49.0%. Industrial grew 56%, Communications 79%, Consumer 23% and Automotive 2%. Q3 FY2026 guidance was set at revenue of $3.9bn plus or minus $100m and adjusted EPS of $3.30 plus or minus $0.15.
• 16 Jun 2026 — $1.10 per share dividend paid. Roughly $536m of cash out during the quarter, part of $1,309m returned in Q2 FY2026 alongside $773m of buybacks.
• 22 Jun 2026 — ADI shares set a 52-week closing high of $445.48. Intraday high $445.91, the peak before the summer pullback.
• 23 Jun 2026 — ADI identifies unauthorised access to certain company systems. Incident-response protocols were activated, external cybersecurity experts engaged and law enforcement notified. Operations were not interrupted, but the investigation subsequently found that certain files had been exfiltrated. Disclosed publicly on 29 July 2026.
• 02 Jul 2026 — ADI enters a new $3.0bn 364-day revolving credit facility. Bank of America is administrative agent; the facility matures 1 July 2027, is extendable, and carries an option to convert outstanding loans to a one-year non-amortising term loan for a 0.50% fee, plus an EBITDA-to-interest covenant of at least 3.00 to 1.00. This sits alongside the existing five-year $3.0bn revolver dated 11 April 2025.
• 07 Jul 2026 — Empower Semiconductor acquisition completed. ADI describes the combination as positioning it as "a leading strategic, system-level grid-to-core power partner across the entire AI ecosystem."
• 23 Jul 2026 — ADI confirms Q3 FY2026 results for 19 August 2026. Press release at 7:00 a.m. ET with a conference call at 10:00 a.m. ET.
• 26 Jul 2026 — A second, separate cybersecurity matter emerges. ADI states it was "made aware of public reports regarding a disparate cybersecurity matter" and began assessing its validity, scope and potential impact. Press reporting has linked this to an extortion group claiming roughly 570,000 stolen records.
• 29 Jul 2026 — 8-K filed disclosing both cybersecurity matters. ADI states it does not believe the June incident is reasonably likely to materially impact its business, operations or financial condition, that to its knowledge the data has not been publicly released or used fraudulently, and that it will notify affected parties and regulators as appropriate. The shares closed down 3.21%.
• 01–05 Aug 2026 — Insider selling cluster. Vincent Roche exercised 10,000 options at $108.08 and sold at $363.00 on 3 August; Ray Stata sold roughly 2,832 shares for about $1.07m across 4 and 5 August. The most recent SEC filing of any kind is the 6 August Form 4, and there has been no new ADI press release since 23 July 2026.

12. Key Dates

• 19 Aug 2026 — Q3 FY2026 results for the quarter ended 1 August 2026. Press release 7:00 a.m. ET, conference call 10:00 a.m. ET. Confirmed by ADI on 23 July 2026. Guidance is revenue of $3.9bn plus or minus $100m, GAAP EPS of $2.60 plus or minus $0.15 and adjusted EPS of $3.30 plus or minus $0.15.
• Expected 19 Aug 2026 — Next quarterly dividend declaration. ADI has declared each quarterly dividend alongside earnings; the ex-date, record date and payment date have not yet been published.
• 31 Oct 2026 — FY2026 fiscal year end, the Saturday nearest 31 October on ADI's 52/53-week convention.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Q4 and full-year FY2026 results. The FY2025 equivalent was released on 25 November 2025; no date has been announced.
• Expected Dec 2026 — $900.0m of 2026 Notes mature, the nearest bond maturity. Already reclassified to current debt on the 2 May 2026 balance sheet at $899.2m.
• Expected Mar 2027 — 2027 annual meeting of shareholders. The 2026 meeting was held on 11 March 2026; the 2027 date has not been published.
• 01 Jul 2027 — New $3.0bn 364-day revolving credit facility matures, subject to extension.
• 11 Apr 2030 — Existing five-year $3.0bn revolving credit facility matures.

No investor day or capital markets day has been announced. ADI's disclosed forward appearances are sell-side conferences, most recently the Bank of America Global Technology Conference announced on 21 May 2026. Further out, the debt maturity ladder runs from $440.2m of 2027 Notes in June 2027 through to $550.0m of 2054 Notes in April 2054. Discuss ADI and the wider semiconductor cycle with other members in the ChartsView Forum.

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Disclaimer: This research is produced by ChartsView for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All information is sourced from publicly available company filings, press releases, and official data. ChartsView does not use analyst opinions or third-party ratings. Always conduct your own due diligence and consider your personal financial situation before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Last Updated: 14 August 2026

Automatic Data Processing is the largest payroll and human capital management provider in the world, paying more than 42 million workers across 140-plus countries and territories. It closed fiscal 2026 on 30 June with revenue of $21.95bn, up 7%, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $11.12, up 11% — the company's twentieth consecutive year of revenue growth and the year in which its board approved a fifty-first consecutive annual dividend increase. This report sets out what ADP owns, how the money actually arrives, the five-year financial record drawn from the company's own filings, and the raw valuation arithmetic. It contains no analyst price targets and no third-party ratings.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	Automatic Data Processing, Inc.
Ticker / Exchange	ADP / NASDAQ Global Select Market
Headquarters	One ADP Boulevard, Roseland, New Jersey, USA
Founded	1949, by Henry Taub, as Automatic Payrolls, Inc.
Sector	Human capital management, payroll processing and HR outsourcing
CEO / Leadership	Maria Black, President and Chief Executive Officer (effective 1 January 2023); Peter Hadley, Chief Financial Officer
Employees	Approximately 67,000 associates worldwide as at 30 June 2026
Revenue (FY2026, year ended 30 June 2026)	$21,947.4m, up 7% year on year
Net earnings (FY2026)	$4,413.5m GAAP; $4,485.4m adjusted
Diluted EPS (FY2026)	$10.94 GAAP; $11.12 adjusted
Market capitalisation	Approximately $109.7bn at $276.23 per share, 14 August 2026
Shares outstanding	Approximately 397.3 million
Clients	More than 1.1 million, in over 140 countries and territories
Workers paid	More than 42 million worldwide, of which roughly 26 million in the United States
Dividend	$1.70 per share per quarter, $6.80 annualised; 51 consecutive annual increases
Credit ratings	AA- (S&P), Aa3 (Moody's), AA- (Fitch)

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Scale that is genuinely hard to replicate: ADP pays more than 42 million workers, moved $3.5 trillion of client funds in fiscal 2026 and issued over 79 million year-end US employee tax statements. Payroll compliance across 140-plus jurisdictions is a regulatory obligation, not a discretionary purchase, and the switching cost of moving it is high.
• Float income is now a $1.35bn profit engine: Interest on funds held for clients reached $1,354.8m in fiscal 2026, up 14%, on average client fund balances of $40.4bn at an average yield of 3.4%. Management guides that yield to roughly 3.7% in fiscal 2027 on balances growing 3–4%, taking interest income to $1.540–1.560bn. This income requires no incremental headcount.
• Margins are still expanding: Employer Services segment margin reached 36.7% in fiscal 2026, up 60 basis points, and management has guided consolidated adjusted EBIT margin expansion of a further 70–90 basis points in fiscal 2027 alongside 5–6% revenue growth and 9–11% adjusted EPS growth.
• A dividend record almost no company can match: The board approved its fifty-first consecutive annual increase in November 2025, lifting the quarterly rate 10% to $1.70. ADP paid $2,626.3m of dividends and repurchased $2,083.3m of stock in fiscal 2026, with $4.86bn still available under the $6bn authorisation approved in January 2026, all supported by AA- rated credit.
• The enterprise push has real product behind it: Lyric HCM now carries the WorkForce Software suite acquired in October 2024 and the ADP Assist agentic AI layer, giving ADP a credible large-enterprise offering against cloud-native rivals. Research and development spending was $1,405m in fiscal 2026.

Bear Case

• The engine that drives organic growth has stalled: US pays per control — same-store employment at ADP's existing clients — grew just 1% in fiscal 2026, and management guides 0–1% for fiscal 2027. ADP's volume growth is a direct function of American hiring, and American hiring is barely positive.
• Retention is guided to go backwards: Employer Services client revenue retention was 92.1% in fiscal 2026, flat year on year, and management explicitly guides a decline of 10 to 30 basis points in fiscal 2027. Small movements in retention compound heavily in a subscription base this large.
• Float income cuts both ways: The $1.35bn of client-funds interest that flattered fiscal 2026 is a function of the rate cycle. ADP's fiscal 2027 assumptions rest on forward curves as at 28 July 2026 and a 4.4% blended new-purchase rate; a faster easing cycle, or a fall in employment that shrinks the $40.4bn of balances, removes profit that carries essentially no cost.
• Competition is sharper at the top and the bottom: Workday, Paycom and Paylocity compete directly for the mid-market and enterprise seats ADP wants most, and the 10-K names cloud HCM providers, ERP vendors and financial institutions as competitors. Dayforce's take-private by Thoma Bravo in February 2026 removes a listed comparator but not a competitor.
• The multiple assumes the compounding continues: At roughly 25 times trailing GAAP earnings for a business guiding 5–6% revenue growth, the shares price in uninterrupted execution. A restructuring charge of $91.1m was booked in the fourth quarter for a new corporate business alignment programme, a reminder that even ADP has to work at its cost base.

3. Business Segments

ADP reports two operating segments. Figures below are for fiscal 2026, the year ended 30 June 2026, and reconcile to total revenue of $21,947.4m.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Employer Services — $14,831.4m, up 7%	67.6%	Payroll processing, tax filing, time and attendance, talent, benefits administration and HR outsourcing sold directly to employers, from one-person businesses to global enterprises. Segment pre-tax earnings were $5,436.8m, a 36.7% margin, up 60 basis points. New business bookings were $2.2bn, up 6%.
PEO Services — $7,128.1m, up 7%	32.5%	ADP TotalSource, a certified professional employer organisation in which ADP co-employs the client's workforce and provides pooled benefits, workers' compensation and state unemployment insurance. Average worksite employees were approximately 762,000, up 2%, ending the year at 775,000. Segment pre-tax earnings were $936.1m, a 13.1% margin, down 110 basis points.
Other and eliminations — negative $12.1m	-0.1%	Corporate items and intersegment eliminations that do not belong to either reportable segment.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. ADP earns revenue three ways. First, recurring per-employee-per-period fees for payroll and HCM software and outsourced services in Employer Services. Second, PEO service fees, where ADP co-employs roughly 762,000 worksite employees and bundles benefits, workers' compensation and unemployment insurance — a business that carries $718.4m of embedded workers' compensation and state unemployment costs. Third, and less visibly, interest on the money it holds. Because ADP collects payroll and tax funds from clients before remitting them to employees and tax authorities, it sits on an average balance of $40.4bn, which it invests through an extended-duration ladder. That produced $1,354.8m of interest income in fiscal 2026 and a net contribution of $1,314.6m after short-term financing costs, up 22%.

Why clients stay. Payroll is the one system an employer cannot afford to have fail. Employer Services client revenue retention was 92.1% in fiscal 2026 and estimated average client tenure is roughly 13 years in Employer Services and 6 years in PEO. The moat is a compound of regulatory complexity across more than 140 jurisdictions, integration into general ledgers, benefits carriers and time systems, and the simple operational reality that migrating payroll mid-year is painful. Scale then reinforces itself: ADP amortises compliance engineering for 60-plus statutory jurisdictions across 1.1 million clients, which a subscale competitor cannot.

Where the leverage sits. The float is the quiet source of operating leverage. Interest income scales with rates and balances but requires no additional service delivery, which is why fiscal 2026 saw revenue up 7% and adjusted EPS up 11%. The corollary, covered in the bear case, is that the same line contracts without warning when the rate cycle turns. Investors tracking the rate path against ADP's assumptions can follow it on the ChartsView Economic Calendar.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from ADP's quarterly earnings releases, Form 10-K filings and SEC XBRL company facts. ADP's fiscal year ends on 30 June, so fiscal 2026 covers 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026. Adjusted figures are ADP's own non-GAAP measures, which exclude items such as transformation initiative costs, gains and losses on business divestitures and certain legal settlements.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2022 (to 30 Jun 2022)	16,498.3	+9.9%	$7.00	$7.01	$4.05	$2,987.1m
FY2023 (to 30 Jun 2023)	18,012.2	+9.2%	$8.21	$8.23	$4.79	$2,989.0m
FY2024 (to 30 Jun 2024)	19,202.6	+6.6%	$9.10	$9.18	$5.45	$2,991.3m
FY2025 (to 30 Jun 2025)	20,560.9	+7.1%	$9.98	$10.01	$6.02	$3,974.7m
FY2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	21,947.4	+6.7%	$10.94	$11.12	$6.64	$4,964.1m

Revenue compounded at 7.4% a year over the four-year span from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2026. Dividends declared per share compounded at 13.1% a year over the same period, roughly double the revenue rate, funded by margin expansion and a falling share count. Long-term debt rose from $2.99bn to $4.96bn across the period, principally to fund the WorkForce Software acquisition in fiscal 2025 and general corporate purposes; at 0.8 times fiscal 2026 EBITDA it remains modest, and ADP carries AA- ratings from S&P and Fitch.

Quarter / Half	Revenue	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q4 FY2026 (to 30 Jun 2026)	$5,473.8m	$2.64	$2.45
Q3 FY2026 (to 31 Mar 2026)	$5,939.0m	$3.37	$3.38
Q2 FY2026 (to 31 Dec 2025)	$5.4bn †	$2.62	$2.62
Q1 FY2026 (to 30 Sep 2025)	$5.2bn †	$2.49	$2.49
FY2026 total	$21,947.4m	$11.12	$10.94

† Q1 and Q2 fiscal 2026 revenue is stated to the nearest $0.1bn as presented in the respective quarterly earnings releases; Q3, Q4 and the full year are stated to $0.1m as reported. The four quarterly GAAP EPS figures sum exactly to the $10.94 full-year figure, and the four adjusted figures to $11.12.

Cash generation. Operating cash flow was $5,441.2m in fiscal 2026, up 10% from $4,939.7m. Capital expenditure on property and equipment was $196.6m and purchases of intangible assets, principally capitalised software, were a further $468.5m. Depreciation and amortisation was $585.9m. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $4,230.1m at 30 June 2026 with a further $138.6m of long-term corporate marketable securities; short-term marketable securities were nil. Commercial paper outstanding, used seasonally to fund client obligations, was zero at the year end, against $4,769.5m a year earlier.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Share price	$276.23 (14 August 2026)
Market cap	~$109.7bn (397.3m shares at $276.23)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~25.2x (share price $276.23 / FY2026 GAAP diluted EPS $10.94). On ADP's adjusted diluted EPS of $11.12 the same price is ~24.8x.
P/E (forward)	~22.6x (share price $276.23 / FY2027 adjusted EPS of $12.12–$12.34, derived from management's guided 9–11% adjusted EPS growth on the FY2026 base of $11.12; midpoint $12.23)
P/S (TTM)	~5.0x (market cap ~$109.7bn / FY2026 revenue $21.95bn)
Enterprise value	~$110.3bn (market cap ~$109.7bn + total debt ~$4.97bn − cash and corporate securities ~$4.37bn, per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet). Total debt is long-term debt of $4,964.1m plus current debt of $1.0m; commercial paper was nil at year end. Funds held for clients and the offsetting client funds obligations are excluded, as they are held in trust and are not corporate assets or liabilities.
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~17.3x (EV ~$110.3bn / EBITDA ~$6,365m). EBITDA is operating income of $5,319.7m — revenue $21,947.4m less total costs and expenses $16,627.7m — plus interest expense of $459.3m, which sits within that cost line, plus depreciation and amortisation of $585.9m from the cash flow statement. ADP does not tag a separate operating income figure in XBRL, so this is derived; the resulting EBIT of ~$5,779m is consistent with ADP's own reported adjusted EBIT margin.
P/FCF	~20.9x (market cap ~$109.7bn / FCF ~$5,245m; FCF = operating cash flow $5,441.2m − capital expenditure $196.6m per the FY2026 cash flow statement). Deducting the further $468.5m spent on intangible assets, principally capitalised software, gives FCF of ~$4,776m and a multiple of ~23.0x.
Dividend yield	~2.5% ($6.80 annualised / $276.23)
52-week high	$310.08
52-week low	$188.16
Short interest (% of float)	3.7% (13.14m shares short against a float of ~376.9m, settlement date 31 July 2026, down from 14.87m the prior month)
Days to cover	5.3 days (31 July 2026 settlement)

7. What Are They Building

ADP Assist. ADP's generative and agentic AI layer, embedded across its platforms and grounded in what the company describes as its own institutional payroll knowledge. It delivers persona-based agents built separately for employees, managers, HR practitioners and payroll practitioners. The scale of the underlying dataset is the point: ADP moved $3.5 trillion of client funds and processed more than 79 million year-end US employee tax statements in fiscal 2026.

ADP Lyric HCM. The flagship global cloud HCM platform aimed at large enterprises, unifying HR, payroll, workforce management, talent and analytics with ADP Assist built in. This is ADP's answer to cloud-native competition at the top of the market, and the WorkForce Software suite acquired in October 2024 was folded directly into Lyric as a unified global workforce management offering from around November 2025.

Acquisitions and spending. Fiscal 2026 was an integration year rather than an acquisition year — ADP spent just $22.8m net on businesses, against $1,165.1m in fiscal 2025 when WorkForce Software was bought. Pequity, a compensation-planning business acquired in 2025, extends the talent management suite. Research and development expenditure was $1,405m in fiscal 2026, up from $1,388m in fiscal 2025 and $1,276m in fiscal 2024, explicitly including investment in generative and agentic AI.

8. Competitive Landscape

ADP competes across an unusually wide span — from one-person payroll accounts against Paychex and Intuit, to global enterprise HCM deployments against Workday. Market capitalisations below were checked on 14 August 2026.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Paychex (NASDAQ: PAYX)	~$44.6bn	The closest direct comparator in US small and mid-market payroll and PEO. Trades on a trailing P/E of ~24.6x, near-identical to ADP's ~24.6x on the same basis, indicating the market prices the two payroll incumbents almost interchangeably.
Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY)	~$51.0bn	ADP's principal threat at the large-enterprise end, and the reason Lyric HCM exists. Trades on a trailing P/E of ~54.6x against ADP's ~24.6x, reflecting a growth-versus-cash-return split in how the two are valued.
Paycom Software (NYSE: PAYC)	~$10.1bn	Mid-market challenger built on a single-database, employee-usage model. Forward P/E of ~16.1x, the cheapest of the listed HCM peer set, with short interest of 8.5% of float against ADP's 3.7%.
Paylocity (NASDAQ: PCTY)	~$8.1bn	Mid-market cloud HCM competitor. Forward P/E ~15.8x with short interest at 7.0% of float, again materially higher than ADP's, indicating the market treats the challengers as carrying more execution risk.
Dayforce (formerly Ceridian)	Not listed — taken private	Acquired by Thoma Bravo and delisted on 4 February 2026. Remains a live competitor in enterprise HCM but is no longer a listed comparator, which removes one of the few pure-play public benchmarks for ADP's enterprise business.

9. Insider Activity

Maria Black has been President and Chief Executive Officer since 1 January 2023, having been President from January 2022 and having succeeded Carlos Rodriguez. She was quoted in the fiscal 2026 results released on 29 July 2026, confirming she remains in post. Peter Hadley is Chief Financial Officer. The transactions below are drawn from Form 4 filings made with the SEC during 2026.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Robert H. Swan	07 May 2026	Open-market purchase	3,619	$206.05	~$745,700	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted January 2026
Brian L. Michaud	08 May 2026	Open-market sale	848	$212.13	~$179,900	Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted September 2025
Maria Black	05 Jan 2026	Open-market sale	715	Not disclosed in filing summary	Not disclosed in filing summary	Discretionary
Maria Black	2026	Rule 16b-3(f) acquisition	49.4306	$223.94	~$11,100	Exempt administrative transaction
David Foskett	2026	Rule 16b-3(f) acquisition	49.4306	$223.94	~$11,100	Exempt administrative transaction

The pattern is unremarkable for a large-cap compounder: a director buying on a pre-arranged plan, an executive selling on a pre-arranged plan, and routine exempt administrative acquisitions. Neither the scale nor the direction of these trades carries a strong signal. Corporate-level buying has been far more significant than individual activity — ADP repurchased $2,083.3m of its own stock in fiscal 2026, with $4.86bn remaining under the $6bn authorisation approved in January 2026.

10. Key Risks

• Employment-cycle sensitivity: Revenue tracks client payroll headcount directly. US pays per control grew only 1% in fiscal 2026 and is guided to 0–1% for fiscal 2027. ADP's 10-K explicitly names a slowdown in employment levels, including as a result of AI, as a risk to results. A US recession would compress volume growth, PEO worksite employee counts and client funds balances simultaneously.
• Interest-rate exposure on client funds: The $1,354.8m of float income earned in fiscal 2026 on average balances of $40.4bn is contingent on the rate path. ADP's fiscal 2027 guidance rests on forward curves as at 28 July 2026 and a blended new-purchase rate assumption of 4.4%. A faster easing cycle would remove high-margin income, and the 10-K also flags the risk of having to sell portfolio assets at a loss.
• Client retention erosion: Employer Services client revenue retention was 92.1% in fiscal 2026 and management guides a decline of 10 to 30 basis points in fiscal 2027. Across a base of more than 1.1 million clients, sustained retention slippage would materially change the organic growth algorithm even with bookings growing.
• Cybersecurity and data breach: ADP holds payroll, tax, health, benefits and banking data for tens of millions of workers and moves $3.5 trillion of client funds annually. The 10-K discloses that the company has been and expects to continue to be the target of intrusion, ransomware, denial-of-service and insider attacks, and cites AI as accelerating attacker sophistication. A material breach would carry regulatory, litigation and reputational consequences well beyond the direct cost.
• Technological disruption from AI: ADP's own risk factors state that emerging generative and agentic AI technologies may be disruptive to the HCM industry and could render its offerings less competitive if rivals adapt faster. Payroll business process outsourcing is precisely the kind of rules-based work that automation targets.
• PEO co-employment liability and benefit costs: As a certified PEO co-employing roughly 762,000 worksite employees, ADP bears statutory employer obligations even where clients are contractually responsible. Workers' compensation and state unemployment costs embedded in PEO revenue were $718.4m in fiscal 2026, and PEO segment margin already fell 110 basis points to 13.1%. Adverse health or workers' compensation cost trends flow through directly.
• Competitive pressure at both ends of the market: Workday, Paycom, Paylocity, the now-private Dayforce, ERP vendors and financial institutions all compete for ADP's clients, and large employers retain the option of in-housing payroll entirely. Sustained share loss in the mid-market, where switching costs are lowest, would be difficult to reverse.
• Cross-border regulatory complexity: Operating in more than 140 countries exposes ADP to GDPR, the California Privacy Rights Act, the EU AI Act, the US Department of Justice Data Security Program, anti-money-laundering rules under the Bank Secrecy Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act, plus banking supervision of ADP Trust Bank by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Non-compliance in any one jurisdiction could bring fines, licence suspension or reputational damage.

11. Recent Developments

• 29 Jul 2026 — Fiscal 2026 results and fiscal 2027 guidance. Revenue of $21,947.4m, up 7%, with adjusted diluted EPS of $11.12, up 11%, and fourth-quarter adjusted EPS of $2.64, up 17%. Management guided fiscal 2027 revenue growth of 5–6%, adjusted EBIT margin expansion of 70–90 basis points, GAAP EPS growth of 11–13% and adjusted EPS growth of 9–11%. Client funds interest income was guided to $1.540–1.560bn.
• 29 Jul 2026 — New business alignment programme announced. ADP disclosed a $91.1m fourth-quarter pre-tax charge for a corporate business alignment programme covering severance and restructuring, alongside an $18.0m net charge for a legal settlement recorded during the fiscal year.
• 29 Apr 2026 — Third-quarter results beat and guidance raised. Revenue of $5,939m and adjusted diluted EPS of $3.37, both ahead of consensus. Full-year fiscal 2026 guidance was raised to revenue growth of 6–7% and adjusted EPS growth of 10–11%.
• 28 Jan 2026 — Second-quarter results. Revenue up 6% to approximately $5.4bn with diluted EPS of $2.62, up 11%. Full-year revenue growth guidance was updated to around 6%.
• 14 Jan 2026 — New $6bn share repurchase authorisation. The board authorised a $6bn common stock repurchase programme, replacing the $5bn authorisation approved in 2022. As at 30 June 2026, $4.86bn remained available.
• 12 Nov 2025 — Fifty-first consecutive annual dividend increase. The quarterly dividend was raised 10%, or $0.16, to $1.70 per share, an annualised $6.80, payable from 1 January 2026 to holders of record on 12 December 2025.
• 04 Feb 2026 — Dayforce delisted following Thoma Bravo take-private. The former Ceridian ceased public trading, removing a listed enterprise HCM comparator from ADP's peer group while leaving the competitive dynamic unchanged.

12. Key Dates

• Expected 28 Oct 2026 — First-quarter fiscal 2027 results, covering the quarter ending 30 September 2026, based on ADP's established reporting cadence. The company typically confirms the date by press release two to three weeks beforehand.
• Expected Sep 2026 — Record and ex-dividend date for the September quarterly declaration at the current $1.70 per share rate, on ADP's established mid-quarter cadence.
• Expected 01 Oct 2026 — Payment date for the September quarterly dividend, following ADP's practice of paying on the first day of January, April, July and October.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Board consideration of a fifty-second consecutive annual dividend increase, which in each of the past several years has been announced in November.
• Expected Nov 2026 — Annual meeting of stockholders. ADP incorporated its 2026 proxy statement by reference into the fiscal 2026 Form 10-K; the specific 2026 meeting date had not been separately confirmed by press release as at 14 August 2026.
• Expected Jan 2027 — Second-quarter fiscal 2027 results, covering the quarter ending 31 December 2026.

ADP also publishes the monthly ADP National Employment Report in the first week of each month, which is itself a widely watched US labour market indicator and a useful read-through to the pays-per-control metric that drives ADP's own volume growth. Scheduled macroeconomic releases can be tracked on the ChartsView Economic Calendar, price action on Live Charts, and reader discussion in the ChartsView Forum.

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